244
Stevens, J., dissenting
existed in 1979 now represents about 40% of the market; this growth has occurred while the detariffing policy has been in effect without any indication that the absence of filed schedules has produced discriminatory or unreasonable pricing by nondominant carriers. Extolling the "enormous importance" of filed rates, ante, at 231, and resorting to dictionary definitions and colorful metaphors are unsatisfactory substitutes for a reasoned explanation of why the statute requires rate filing even when the practice serves no useful purpose and actually harms consumers.
The filed tariff provisions of the Communications Act are not ends in themselves, but are merely one of several procedural means for the Commission to ensure that carriers do not charge unreasonable or discriminatory rates. See 84 F. C. C. 2d, at 483. The Commission has reasonably concluded that this particular means of enforcing the statute's substantive mandates will prove counterproductive in the case of nondominant long-distance carriers. Even if the 1934 Congress did not define the scope of the Commission's modification authority with perfect scholarly precision, this is surely a paradigm case for judicial deference to the agency's interpretation, particularly in a statutory regime so obviously meant to maximize administrative flexibility.7 Whatever the best reading of § 203(b)(2), the Commission's reading cannot in my view be termed unreasonable. It is
7 The majority considers it unlikely that Congress would have conferred power on the Commission to exempt carriers from the supposedly pivotal rate-filing obligation. See ante, at 231-232. But surely such a delegation is not out of place in a statute that also empowers the FCC, for example, to decide what the "public convenience, interest, or necessity" requires, see, e. g., 47 U. S. C. § 303, and to "prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary in the public interest," § 201(b); see also § 154(i). The Court's rigid reading of § 202(b)(2) is out of step with our prior recognition that the 1934 Act was meant to be a "supple instrument for the exercise of discretion by the expert body which Congress has charged to carry out its legislative policy." FCC v. Pottsville Broadcasting Co., 309 U. S. 134, 138 (1940).
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