American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. United States

In American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. United States, 344 U.S. 298, 73 S.Ct. 307, 97 L.Ed. 337 (1953), the Court held that the Commission could use its general rulemaking authority, ch. 498, 204(a)(6), 49 Stat. 543, 546 (1935) (superseded 1978), to regulate leasing practices that had been developed to undertake wholesale evasion of virtually every substantive provision of the Motor Carrier Act. The Court commented that its function did not "stop with a section-by-section search for the phrase 'regulation of leasing practices' among the literal words of the statutory provisions" and that it would be "an unnatural construction of the Act which would require the Commission to sit idly by and wink at practices that lead to violations of its provisions." 344 U.S. at 309, 311, 73 S.Ct. at 314-315. In American Trucking Assns. v. United States, 344 U.S. 298 (1953), the Supreme Court noted that it was not "a reasonable canon of interpretation that the draftsmen of acts delegating agency powers, as a practical and realistic matter, can or do include specific consideration of every evil sought to be corrected. . . . No great acquaintance with practical affairs is required to know that such prescience, either in fact or in the minds of Congress, does not exist. Its very absence, moreover, is precisely one of the reasons why regulatory agencies such as the Commission are created, for it is the fond hope of their authors that they bring to their work the expert's familiarity with industry conditions which members of the delegating legislatures cannot be expected to possess." (344 U.S., at 309-310.) In American Trucking Associations v. United States, 344 U.S. 298, 73 S. Ct. 307, 97 L.Ed. 337 (1953), the Court noted that it was not 'a reasonable canon of interpretation that the draftsmen of acts delegating agency powers, as a practical and realistic matter, can or do include specific consideration of every evil sought to be corrected. . . . No great acquaintance with practical affairs is required to know that such prescience, either in fact or in the minds of Congress, does not exist. Its very absence, moreover, is precisely one of the reasons why regulatory agencies such as the Commission are created, for it is the fond hope of their authors that they bring to their work the expert's familiarity with industry conditions which members of the delegating legislatures cannot be expected to possess.' 344 U.S., at 309-310, 73 S.Ct. at 314.