Legal Significance

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Your communicant cannot agree with the writer of the "Yesterday" column in today's CRIMSON, in which he stated that the recent Supreme Court decision dealing with executive control of oil production "has little legal significance." The Court stated that Section 9 (C) of the N.I.R.A. "goes beyond those limits" "of delegation which there is no constitutional authority to transcend" and that "due process of law requires that it shall appear that the order is within the authority of the officer, board or commission and, if that authority depends on determinations of fact, those determinations must be shown." Thus, the "legal significance" of the decision is that the Court is limiting the extent to which Congress can delegate its legislative power. Former decisions such as "Field v. Clark" and "Hampton & Co. v. U. S." have upheld such delegation, while this decision holds that Section 9 (C) is too broad in that "Congress has declared no policy, has established no standard, has laid down no rule."

Thus has the Court served notice on Congress and the President that grants of power to the latter must define the limits of such grants, and that executive orders must be predicated upon demonstrated determinations of fact. Of course, as your writer observes, the decision is "interpreted by each writer in accordance with his own political allegiance." But no one can deny that it comes as a welcome reminder that, if Congress is to set up administrative agencies it must enjoin upon them "a certain course of procedure" and that when such agencies are "required as a condition precedent to order, to make a finding of facts, the validity of the order must rest upon the needed findings." (Cited in the oil case opinion from "Wichita Railroad and Light Co. v. Public Utilities Commission.")

Lest the reader would think, on the other hand, that this question is an open and shut issue, we quote two sentences cited by the Court, the first from the Field case and the second from the Hampton case. "Congress cannot delegate legislative power to the President." And in "Hampton v. U. S.": "If Congress shall lay down by legislative act an intelligible principle to which the person or body authorized to fix such rates is directed to conform, such legislative action is not a forbidden delegation of legislative power." Such contradictions illustrate the trials and tribulations of a judge. V. H. Kramer '35.