Yakus v. United States

Yakus v. United States, 321 U.S. 414 (1944), argued 7 Jan. 1944, decided 27 Mar. 1944 by vote of 6 to 3; Stone for the Court, Roberts, Rutledge, and Murphy in dissent. The Court upheld congressional power to fetter judicial review and to delegate broad and flexible law‐making power to an administrative agency in this constitutional challenge to the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942. The wartime anti‐inflation measure, intended to expedite price control enforcement, conferred on the federal district courts jurisdiction over violations of Office of Price Administration (OPA) regulations made under the act. But judicial power to consider the constitutionality of such regulations was excepted. Congress specified that challenges to their validity be initially reviewed under stringent time limitations by the OPA and on appeal exclusively by a special Article III tribunal in the District of Columbia—the Emergency Court of Appeals—and thereafter by the Supreme Court.

Massachusetts meat dealer Albert Yakus, criminally prosecuted for violating the wholesale beef price ceiling, had failed to launch a procedurally difficult pre‐enforcement attack on the OPA regulations constitutionality and was barred from collateral challenges during his trial. The Court affirmed his conviction, holding that “so long as there is an opportunity … for judicial review which satisfies the demands of due process,” the bifurcated enforcement and constitutional proceedings were permissible (p. 444). In dissent, Wiley Rutledge, with Frank Murphy, asserted that once Congress conferred jurisdiction, it could not compel the district judges to ignore Marbury v. Madison nor to violate the Constitution by enforcing the criminal sanctions a statute and regulations devoid of due process.

A Yakus‐like incontestability provision reached the Court in Adamo Wrecking Co. v. United States (1978). Statutory construction facilitated evasion of the constitutional issues, but Lewis Powell, concurring, questioned the validity of Yakus except as an exercise of war powers. Nevertheless, modern environmental legislation contains judicial review schemes similar to that upheld in Yakus.

Justice Roberts, who also dissented, embraced the non‐delegation doctrine argument and held that the OPA had exercised unconstitutionally delegated congressional powers. The New Deal Court majority reacted by stipulating that statutory standards need only be sufficiently defined to permit ascertainment of the administrative agency's obedience to the congressional will.

See also Delegation of Powers; Judicial Power and Jurisdiction.

Peter G. Fish