U.S. Supreme Court FEDERAL RADIO COMMISSION v. GENERAL ELECTRIC CO., 281 U.S. 464 (1930)

[Page 281 U.S. 464, 467]

will be served thereby'; authorized the commission to determine the question of public convenience, interest, or necessity; declares that decisions of the commission in all matters over which it has jurisdiction 'shall be final, subject to the right of appeal' therein given; provides ( section 16) that any applicant for a station license or the renewal of such a license, whose application is refused by the commission, may appeal from such decision to the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia; directs that the grounds of the appeal be stated and the revision be confined to them; requires the commission, where an appeal is taken, to transmit to the court the originals or certified copies of all papers and evidence presented upon the application refused, together with a copy of the commission's decision and a statement of the facts and grounds of the decision; authorizes the court to take additional evidence upon such terms and conditions as it may deem proper; and provides that the court 'shall hear, review and determine the appeal upon said record and evidence, and may alter or revise the decision appealed from and enter such judgment as to it may seem just.'

We think it plain from this re sume of the pertinent parts of the act that the powers confided to the commission respecting the granting and renewal of station licenses are purely administrative, and that the provision for appeals to the Court of Appeals does no more than make that court a superior and revising agency in the same field. The court's province under that provision is essentially the same as its province under the legislation which up to a recent date permitted appeals to it from administrative decisions of the Commissioner of Patents. [Footnote 1] Indeed, the provision in the act of 1927 is patterned largely

[Page 281 U.S. 464, 470]

set aside orders of the Interstate Commerce Commission, as also orders of the Federal Trade Commission, makes it apparent that the jurisdiction exercised in those suits is not administrative, but strictly judicial, and therefore quite unlike the jurisdiction exercised on appeals from the Radio Commission.

Of course the action of the Court of Appeals in assessing the costs against the commission did not alter the nature of the proceeding.

Our conclusion is that the proceeding in that court was not a case or controversy in the sense of the judiciary article, but was an administrative proceeding, and therefore that the decision therein is not reviewable by this court.

Writ of certiorari dismissed.

Mr. Chief Justice HUGHES did not participate in the consideration or decision of this case. Footnotes

Footnote 1 Sections 59-62, title 35 U. S. Code (35 USCA 59-62). The jurisdiction vested in the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia by this legislation was transferred to the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals by the Act of March 2, 1929, c. 488, 45 Stat. 1475.

Footnote 2 Now section 89, title 15, U. S. Code (15 USCA 89). This jurisdiction also was transferred to the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals by the act cited in note 1.