ANALYSIS OF THE BILL AS REPORTED

The first section gives the bill a short title.

Section 2 extends until June 30, 1949, the President's authority to enter into foreign trade agreements under section 350 of the Tariff Act of 1930. The present authority expires June 12, 1948.

Subsection (a) of section 3 provides that before entering into any such agreement the President shall obtain the findings of the Tariff Commission as to the action which may be taken with respect to any article to be imported without causing or threatening serious injury to domestic producers of like or similar articles, or in the case of increases or additional import restrictions, the minimum required to avoid such injury. This is a modification of section 2 of the bill as passed by the House, designed particularly to make clear that if increases in duties or additional import restrictions are required with respect to any article to avoid serious injury to domestic producers of like or similar articles, the Tariff Commission is to make findings as to the minimum increases in duties or additional import restrictions required.

Subsection (b) of section 3 requires the Commission to hold hearings before reporting to the President. It will be noted that the hearings of the Commission will be directed to the matters over which the Commission has jurisdiction, namely, investigations with a view to making findings of fact with respect to injury to domestic producers, and that the President under section 4 of the Trade Agreements Act of 1934, as amended, may hold any hearings he deems advisable with respect to the matters to be incorporated in any trade agreement.

Subsection (c) of section 3 amends section 4 of the act of June 12, 1934, to eliminate the Tariff Commission as one of the agencies advising the President. Under the philosophy of this bill the Commission, as noted above, does not render advice as such even to the President with respect to the terms of any trade agreement, but is limited to furnishing information. This subsection also makes the technical amendment of substituting the National Military Establishment for the Departments of War and Navy in such section 4.

Section 4 requires the Commission to furnish United States officials negotiating a trade agreement any facts which it has available, but prohibits the Commission from participating in decisions with respect to the terms of any such agreement except to the extent of furnishing information under this section and the making of reports pursuant to section 3.

Section 5 requires the President to report to Congress if he enters into an agreement exceeding the limits found by the Tariff Commission, transmitting a copy of the agreement and giving his reasons for exceeding such limits. The President's message must accurately identify the articles with respect to which the limits are exceeded. The Commission is then required to deposit a copy of its report with the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Finance of the Senate.

AMENDMENTS TO HOUSE BILL

In addition to matters touched upon in the above analysis the committee amendment makes two additional changes in the House bill. (1) The provision delaying the taking effect of a trade agreement which has gone beyond the peril points found by the Tariff Commission, and permitting Congress by concurrent resolution to prevent the agreement from going into effect, has been omitted. This change involved the striking out of section 4 (a) (3), section 4 (b), and all of section 6 of the House bill.

(2) There has also been stricken from the House bill section 5, the effect of which was to amend existing law so as to permit the 50-percent increase of duties allowable under the statute to be computed on the basis of the duties existing on June 12, 1934, the date of enactment of the Trade Agreements Act, instead of January 1, 1945, the date fixed by existing law.

O

80TH CONGRESS 2d Session

SENATE

{No. 1559

REPORT

REVISING, CODIFYING, AND ENACTING INTO LAW TITLE 28 OF THE UNITED STATES CODE, ENTITLED "JUDICIAL CODE AND JUDICIARY"

JUNE 9 (legislative day, JUNE 1), 1948.-Ordered to be printed

Mr. WILEY, from the Committee on the Judiciary, submitted the following

REPORT

[To accompany H. R. 3214]

The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the bill (H. R. 3214) to revise, codify, and enact into law title 28 of the United States Code, entitled "Judicial Code and Judiciary," having considered the same, do now report the bill to the Senate favorably, with amendments, and recommend that the bill, as amended, do pass.

The purpose of the bill is to codify and revise the laws relating to the Federal judiciary and judicial procedure.

No revision of these laws has been made since 1911, and the Judicial Code enacted in that year did not include all the laws upon the subject.

A tremendous amount of additional legislation in this field has been enacted since 1911. Consequently, there is now a great mass of statutory material upon this subject, much of which is archaic, ambiguous, conflicting, and to an unascertained extent repealed by implication by later statutes. These statutes are scattered through many volumes of the Statutes at Large which are not easily accessible to the bench and bar. Moreover, many of the statutes relating to procedure appearing in the books have been rendered wholly obsolete by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure prescribed by the Supreme Court. This situation results in the loss of much time and effort on the part of the bench and bar in determining what is the present law in this field, always at the risk of possible error.

It is evident, therefore, that a thorough codification and revision of the statutes relating to the judiciary and its procedure is very much in the public interest in order that the law in this important field may be clear, certain, and readily available.

The bill H. R. 3214 accomplishes these desirable results. The statutory material presently in force has been arranged in the bill in a

logical and consistent way, rendering it easily ascertainable. Existing inconsistencies and ambiguities have been removed and obsolete and archaic provisions eliminated or modernized.

By enacting this bill into positive law as title 28 of the United States Code, that title will thereby become the law rather than merely presumptive evidence of the law, and reference to prior volumes of the Statutes at Large will be rendered wholly unnecessary.

Many noncontroversial improvements have been effected which, while individually small in themselves, add up to a very substantial improvement in and modernization of the law relating to the Federal judiciary. At the same time great care has been exercised to make no changes in the existing law which would not meet with substantially unanimous approval.

The bill with the amendments proposed by the committee includes all pertinent laws to January 5, 1948, and the bill provides for it to become effective September 1, 1948, thus allowing an interval in which the bench and bar may become acquainted with the revised arrangement of the law.

The report of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives upon the bill (H. Rept. No. 308, 80th Cong., 1st sess.) describes in detail the scope of the revision, the manner in which it was carried out by the House Committee on the Judiciary and its predecessor, the House Committee on Revision of the Laws, and the principal improvements effected. Appended to the report are the revisers' notes to each section, together with accompanying tables. These explain in great detail the source of the law and the changes made in the course of the codification and revision.

As passed by the House of Representatives, the bill included provisions covering the Tax Court of the United States. These proposed to transfer that court from the Internal Revenue Code, title 26, United States Code, to the Judicial Code. This proposed transfer of the Tax Court to the Judicial Code has proved controversial with respect to the court and as to those who are entitled to practice before it. Since every effort has been made to avoid controversial matters in this revision, the committee recommends that all Tax Court provisions be omitted from this bill.

This

One of the changes proposed by the House of Representatives with respect to the Tax Court provided that Tax Court decisions should be reviewable on appeal to the same extent as similar decisions of the district courts. This in effect repeals the contrary rule laid down in Dobson v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (320 U. S. 489). proposal met with unanimous approval at the hearings on the bill held by your committee. It is recommended that the House amendment be retained. In view of the elimination of the Tax Court from the bill, this must be accomplished by an amendment of the Internal Revenue Code. Such an amendment is included among the committee amendments.

The amendments proposed by the committee, together with the reasons for each, are listed below.