If Congress so provides, violations of valid administrative regulations may be punished as crimes.[79] But the penalties must be provided in the statute itself; additional punishment cannot be imposed by administrative action.[80] In an early case, the Court held that a section prescribing penalties for any violation of a statute did not warrant a prosecution for wilful disobedience of regulations authorized by, and lawfully issued pursuant to, the act.[81] Without disavowing this general proposition, the Court, in 1944, upheld a suspension order issued by the OPA whereby a dealer in fuel oil who had violated rationing regulations was forbidden to receive or deal on that commodity.[82] Although such an order was not explicitly authorized by statute, it was sustained as being a reasonable measure for effecting a fair allocation of fuel oil, rather than as a means of punishment for an offender. In another OPA case, the Court ruled that in a criminal prosecution, a price regulation was subject to the same rule of strict construction as a statute, and that omissions from, or indefiniteness in, such a regulation, could not be cured by the Administrator's interpretation thereof.[83]
Congressional Investigations
INVESTIGATIONS IN AID OF LEGISLATION
No provision of the Constitution expressly authorized either house of Congress to make investigations and exact testimony to the end that it may exercise its legislative function effectively and advisedly. But such a power had been frequently exercised by the British Parliament and by the Assemblies of the American Colonies prior to the adoption of the Constitution.[84] It was asserted by the House of Representatives as early as 1792 when it appointed a committee to investigate the disaster to General St. Clair and his army in the Northwest and empowered it to "call for such persons, papers, and records, as may be necessary to assist their inquiries."[85]
CONDUCT OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT
For many years the investigating function of Congress was limited to inquiries into the administration of the Executive Department or of instrumentalities of the Government. Until the administration of Andrew Jackson this power was not seriously challenged.[86] During the controversy over renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States, John Quincy Adams contended that an unlimited inquiry into the operations of the bank would be beyond the power of the House.[87] Four years later the legislative power of investigation was challenged by the President. A committee appointed by the House of Representatives "with power to send for persons and papers, and with instructions to inquire into the condition of the various executive departments, the ability and integrity with which they have been conducted, * * *"[88] called upon the President and the heads of departments for lists of persons appointed without the consent of the Senate and the amounts paid to them. Resentful of this attempt "to invade the just rights of the Executive Departments" the President refused to comply and the majority of the committee acquiesced.[89] Nevertheless Congressional investigations of Executive Departments have continued to the present day. Shortly before the Civil War, contempt proceedings against a witness who refused to testify in an investigation of John Brown's raid upon the arsenal at Harper's Ferry occasioned a thorough consideration by the Senate of the basis of this power. After a protracted debate, which cut sharply across sectional and party lines, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to imprison the contumacious witness.[90] Notwithstanding this firmly established legislative practice the Supreme Court took a narrow view of the power in the case of Kilbourn v. Thompson.[91] It held that the House of Representatives had overstepped its jurisdiction when it instituted an investigation of losses suffered by the United States as a creditor of Jay Cooke and Company, whose estate was being administered in bankruptcy by a federal court. But nearly half a century later, in McGrain v. Daugherty,[92] it ratified in sweeping terms, the power of Congress to inquire into the administration of an executive department and to sift charges of malfeasance in such administration.
PRIVATE AFFAIRS
Beginning with the resolution adopted by the House of Representatives in 1827 which vested its Committee on Manufactures "with the power to send for persons and papers with a view to ascertain and report to this House such facts as may be useful to guide the judgment of this House in relation to a revision of the tariff duties on imported goods,"[93] the two Houses have asserted the right to inquire into private affairs when necessary to enlighten their judgment on proposed legislation. In Kilbourn v. Thompson,[94] the Court denied the right of Congress to pry into private affairs. Again, in Interstate Commerce Commission v. Brimson,[95] in sustaining a statute authorizing the Courts to use their process to compel witnesses to give testimony sought by the Commission for the enforcement of the act, the Court warned that, "neither branch of the legislative department, still less any merely administrative body, established by Congress, possesses, or can be invested with, a general power of making inquiry into the private affairs of the citizen."[96] Finally, however, in McGrain v. Daugherty,[97] the power of either House "to compel a private individual to appear before it or one of its committees and give testimony needed to enable it efficiently to exercise a legislative function belonging to it under the Constitution, * * *"[98] was judicially recognized and approved.
PURPOSE OF INQUIRY
In the absence of any showing that legislation was contemplated as a result of the inquiry undertaken in Kilbourn v. Thompson, the Supreme Court concluded that the purpose was an improper one—to pry into matters with which the judiciary alone was empowered to deal.[99] Subsequent cases have given the legislature the benefit of a presumption that its object is legitimate. In re Chapman[100] established the proposition that to make an investigation lawful "it was certainly not necessary that the resolutions should declare in advance what the Senate meditated doing when the investigation was concluded."[101] Similarly, in McGrain v. Daugherty, the investigation was presumed to have been undertaken in good faith to aid the Senate in legislating.[102] Going one step further in Sinclair v. United States,[103] which on its facts presented a close parallel to the Kilbourn Case, the Court affirmed the right of the Senate to carry on its investigation of fraudulent leases of government property after suit for the recovery thereof had been instituted. The president of the lessee corporation had refused to testify on the ground that the questions related to his private affairs and to matters cognizable only in the courts wherein they were pending and that the committee avowedly had departed from any inquiry in aid of legislation. The Senate prudently had directed the investigating committee to ascertain what, if any, other or additional legislation may be advisable. Conceding "that Congress is without authority to compel disclosures for the purpose of aiding the prosecution of pending suits," the Court declared that the authority "to require pertinent disclosures in aid of its own constitutional power is not abridged because the information sought to be elicited may also be of use in such suits."[104]