Yakus v. United States

Congress itself made the governing legislative choices. It declared the wartime objective of preventing inflation and its harmful economic effects, selected maximum-price regulation as the means of achieving that objective, and made violation of valid price regulations a criminal offense. The Administrator's role was to apply that legislative policy to changing economic conditions.

Section 2(a) confined the Administrator's discretion. Prices could be fixed only when prices had risen or threatened to rise inconsistently with the Act's purposes; the resulting ceilings had to be generally fair and equitable and had to effectuate those purposes. The Administrator also had to consider designated base-period prices, so far as practicable, and account for relevant changes in costs, distribution, transportation, profits, and other specified factors.

The Constitution does not require Congress to make every factual determination itself or to impose the most rigid possible formula. Congress may allow an administrative officer to ascertain facts and make judgments within a defined statutory field, particularly where nationwide economic regulation requires flexibility. The required statement of considerations and the availability of judicial review made it possible to determine whether the Administrator had remained within Congress's standards.

The Act therefore differed from the National Industrial Recovery Act invalidated in Schechter. Unlike that statute, the Price Control Act did not leave the basic regulatory policy and standards undefined or delegate code-making to private industry; it established a public administrator operating under an intelligible statutory framework.

Section 204(d) gave the Emergency Court of Appeals, subject to Supreme Court review, exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of regulations and expressly denied every other federal, state, and territorial court power to consider their validity. That language was broad enough to cover defensive challenges raised in criminal enforcement proceedings as well as suits seeking injunctive relief.

The statute's legislative history confirmed that reading. Congress distinguished challenges to the validity of the Act itself, which enforcement courts could consider, from challenges to the validity of regulations, which had to proceed through the protest procedure and the Emergency Court.

Congress had constitutional authority to define the jurisdiction of lower federal courts and to channel review of federal regulations into a specialized tribunal. The same considerations that supported exclusive equitable review in Lockerty v. Phillips supported exclusivity when a defendant tried to attack a regulation in a criminal prosecution.

The Court evaluated the procedure against the extraordinary wartime need for prompt, uniform, nationwide price control. Allowing regulations to be suspended or invalidated through scattered litigation in district and state courts could produce conflicting rulings, delay enforcement, and permit the inflationary harms that Congress sought to prevent before they could be repaired.

The Act supplied a meaningful path to review. A regulated party could file a protest supported by written evidence; the Administrator had to act within prescribed time limits; an aggrieved protestant could obtain review in the Emergency Court of Appeals; and this Court could review that court's judgment. The Emergency Court could consider legal errors, evidentiary support, procedural defects, and due-process objections.

Petitioners never filed a protest or attempted to use the statutory system. The Court therefore would not assume that the Administrator would deny a fair hearing, refuse appropriate additional evidence, or fail to modify a regulation when warranted. A party cannot establish that an available remedy is constitutionally inadequate merely by declining to invoke it.

The absence of a judicial interlocutory stay did not make the scheme unconstitutional in these circumstances. The Act did not compel petitioners to continue selling beef; they could test the regulation without first violating it. Moreover, the Administrator retained broad authority to amend, rescind, or effectively suspend regulations in light of a protest. Congress could reasonably require temporary compliance while validity was resolved because the public harm from disrupted wartime price control could not be adequately remedied later.

The Sixth Amendment guaranteed petitioners a jury determination of the criminal charge in the district where it occurred: whether they willfully violated the applicable price regulation. That issue was submitted to the jury. The constitutional validity of the regulation was a distinct issue that Congress could assign to a separate administrative-and-judicial review process.

A defendant may forfeit even constitutional objections by failing to raise them timely before a tribunal authorized to decide them. Congress could make the statutory review route mandatory and could attach criminal consequences to violation of a regulation by a person who failed to use that adequate route to challenge it.

The Court found support in comparable regulatory schemes, including filed-rate and administrative-order systems, where parties must use a designated administrative review process rather than defend a violation by collaterally attacking the governing order. Falbo likewise supported requiring exhaustion of an exclusive administrative remedy before a criminal defendant may challenge an administrative order.

The Court did not decide whether a defendant could challenge a regulation unconstitutional on its face, or whether a defendant diligently pursuing statutory review could be convicted before receiving a determination of validity. Those questions were not presented because petitioners neither alleged facial invalidity nor took any step to invoke the available review process.