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Opinion of the Court.

317 U.S.

ment contracts to those she finds to be violators for three years from the date of the breach.

The matter which the Secretary was investigating and was authorized to investigate was an alleged violation of this Act and these contracts. Her scope would include determining what employees these contracts and the Act covered. It would also include whether the payments to them were lower than the scale fixed pursuant to the Act. She could not perform her full statutory duty until she examined underpayments wherever the coverage extended, because underpayment is an indispensable, albeit not the only, element of proof of violation. It is the only basis on which she can compute liquidated damage as she is required to do, and it is necessary to find the date of the last underpayment to fix the beginning of the three-year period of disqualification for further contracts. Thus the payrolls are clearly related to the violation. Indeed, the underpayment is itself the violation under investigation.

Of course another indispensable element of violation is that the underpaid employee be included within the benefits of the Act and contracts. This, too, was a matter under investigation in the administrative proceeding. But because she sought evidence of underpayment before she made a decision on the question of coverage and alleged that she "had reason to believe" the employees in question were covered, the District Court refused to order its production, tried the issue of coverage itself, and decided it against the Secretary. This ruling would require the Secretary, in order to get evidence of violation, either to allege she had decided the issue of coverage before the hearing or to sever the issues for separate hearing and decision. The former would be of dubious propriety, and the latter of doubtful practicality. The Secretary is given no power to investigate mere coverage, as such, or to make findings thereon except as incident to trial of the issue of violation. No doubt she would have discretion to take

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up the issues of coverage for separate and earlier trial if she saw fit. Or, in a case such as the one revealed by the pleadings in this one, she might find it advisable to begin by examining the payroll, for if there were no underpayments found, the issue of coverage would be academic. On the admitted facts of the case, the District Court had no authority to control her procedure or to condition enforcement of her subpoenas upon her first reaching and announcing a decision on some of the issues in her administrative proceeding.

Nor was the District Court authorized to decide the question of coverage itself. The evidence sought by the subpoena was not plainly incompetent or irrelevant to any lawful purpose of the Secretary in the discharge of her duties under the Act, and it was the duty of the District Court to order its production for the Secretary's consideration. The Secretary may take the same view of the evidence that the District Court did, or she may not. The consequence of the action of the District Court was to disable the Secretary from rendering a complete decision on the alleged violation as Congress had directed her to do, and that decision was stated by the Act to be conclusive as to matters of fact for purposes of the award of government contracts. Congress sought to have the procurement officers advised by the experience and discretion of the Secretary rather than of the District Court. To perform her function she must draw inferences and make findings from the same conflicting materials that the District Court considered in anticipating and foreclosing her conclusions.

The petitioner has advanced many matters that are entitled to hearing and consideration in its defense against the administrative complaint, but they are not of a kind that can be accepted as a defense against the subpoena."

11 These relate to: the meaning of the contract and the Act as implemented by administrative rulings in existence at the time of the making and performance of the contract; the question of possible retro

MURPHY, J., dissenting.

317 U.S.

The subpoena power delegated by the statute as here exercised is so clearly within the limits of Congressional authority that it is not necessary to discuss the constitutional questions urged by the petitioner, and on the record before us the cases on which it relies 12 are inapplicable and do not require consideration.

MR. JUSTICE MURPHY, dissenting:

Affirmed.

Because of the varied and important responsibilities of a quasi-judicial nature that have been entrusted to administrative agencies in the regulation of our political and economic life, their activities should not be subjected to unwarranted and ill-advised intrusions by the judicial branch of the government. Yet, if they are freed of all restraint upon inquisitorial activities and are allowed uncontrolled discretion in the exercise of the sovereign power of government to invade private affairs through the use of the subpoena, to the extent required or sought in situations like the one before us and other inquiries of much broader scope, under the direction of well-meaning but over-zealous officials they may at times become instruments of intolerable oppression and injustice. This is not to say that the power to enforce their subpoenas should never be entrusted to administrative agencies, but thus far Congress, for unstated reasons, has not seen fit to confer such authority upon any agency which it has

active effect of Rulings and Regulations No. 2, supra, note 7; the nature of petitioner's business organization; and practices of procurement, manufacture, storage, consumption and distribution obtaining at petitioner's plants.

12 Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616; Interstate Commerce Commission v. Brimson, 154 U. S. 447; Harriman v. Interstate Commerce Commission, 211 U. S. 407; Ellis v. Interstate Commerce Commission, 237 U. S. 434; Federal Trade Commission v. American Tobacco Co., 264 U. S. 298.

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MURPHY, J., dissenting.

created. So here, while the Secretary of Labor is empowered to administer the Walsh-Healey Act, to "prosecute any inquiry necessary to his functions," and "to issue orders requiring the attendance and the testimony of witnesses and the production of evidence under oath,” he alone cannot compel obedience of those orders. "Jurisdiction" so to do is conferred upon the district courts of the United States and it is our immediate task to delineate the proper function of those courts in the exercise of this jurisdiction. Specifically the question is: What is the duty of the courts when the witness or party claims the proceeding is without authority of law?

1 The disregard of subpoenas issued by some agencies is punishable by fine and imprisonment in a criminal proceeding, but apparently no federal agency has ever been given the power to punish disobedience as a contempt of its authority. (See Final Report of the Attorney General's Committee on Administrative Procedure, Appendix K.) The common method of enforcing subpoenas is to punish disregard of the subpoena as contempt of the issuing body. It has been held in some states that the power to punish for contempt cannot be conferred upon a body of a non-judicial character. See Langenberg v. Decker, 131 Ind. 471, 31 N. E. 190; In re Whitcomb, 120 Mass. 118, 21 Am. Rep. 502. Contra, In re Hayes, 200 N. C. 133, 156 S. E. 791. Compare statements in Interstate Commerce Comm'n v. Brimson, 154 U. S. 447, at 485 and 489.

2 Section 5 of the Act provides in part: "In case of contumacy, failure, or refusal of any person to obey such an order, any District Court of the United States or of any Territory or possession, or the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, within the jurisdiction of which the inquiry is carried on, or within the jurisdiction of which said person who is guilty of contumacy, failure, or refusal is found, or resides or transacts business, upon the application by the Secretary of Labor or representative designated by him, shall have jurisdiction to issue to such person an order requiring such person to appear before him or representative designated by him, to produce evidence if, as, and when so ordered, and to give testimony relating to the matter under investigation or in question; and any failure to obey such order of the court may be punished by said court as a contempt thereof; . . ." Criminal sanctions are not provided.

MURPHY, J., dissenting.

317 U.S.

This Court, in recognition of the drastic nature of the subpoena power and the possibilities of severe mischief inherent in its use, has insisted that it be kept within welldefined channels. Cf. Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616; Hale v. Henkel, 201 U. S. 43; Federal Trade Comm'n v. American Tobacco Co., 264 U. S. 298; Cudahy Packing Co. v. Holland, 315 U. S. 357, 363. In conditioning enforcement of the Secretary's administrative subpoenas upon application therefor to a district court, Congress evidently intended to keep the instant subpoena power within limits, and clearly must have meant for the courts to perform more than a routine ministerial function in passing upon such applications. If this were not the case, it would have been much simpler to lodge the power of enforcement directly with the Secretary, or else to make disregard of his subpoenas a misdemeanor. So we have said that "appropriate defense may be made" to such an application for enforcement. Myers v. Bethlehem Corp., 303 U. S. 41, 49.

The Government concedes that the district courts are more than mere rubber stamps of the agencies in enforcing administrative subpoenas and lists as examples of appropriate defenses, claims that a privilege of the witness, like that against self-incrimination, would be violated; or that the subpoena is unduly vague or unreasonably oppressive; or that the hearing is not of the kind authorized; or that the subpoena was not issued by the person vested with the power; or that it is plain on the pleadings that the evidence sought is not germane to any lawful subject of inquiry. But the Government insists that the issue

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Cf. Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616.

4 Cf. Hale v. Henkel, 201 U. S. 43; Federal Trade Comm'n v. American Tobacco Co., 264 U. S. 298.

5 Cf. Harriman v. Interstate Commerce Comm'n, 211 U. S. 407; Ellis v. Interstate Commerce Comm'n, 237 U. S. 434.

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• Cf. Cudahy Packing Co. v. Holland, 315 U. S. 357.

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