296
Souter, J., dissenting
Nor, apart from § 7(c), are the choices made under the statutes in question here vulnerable on judicial scrutiny. In LHWCA cases over the last 50 years, the assignment to the employer of the risk of nonpersuasion can be seen as placing it on "those best able to bear it," F. H. McGraw & Co., supra, at 887, 888, and as comporting with both the remedial nature of the LHWCA, see Northeast Marine Terminal Co. v. Caputo, 432 U. S. 249, 268 (1977), and the dangerous nature of longshoring, see S. Rep. No. 92-1125, p. 2 (1972). As to the BLBA, there is no question about the consistency of congressional intent with the recitation in the Secretary's regulation, 20 CFR § 718.3(c) (1993), that "Congress intended that [BLBA] claimants be given the benefit of all reasonable doubt as to the existence of total or partial disability or death due to pneumoconiosis." As Congress explained, the BLBA "is intended to be a remedial law. . . . In the absence of definitive medical conclusions there is a clear need to resolve doubts in favor of the disabled miner or his survivors." S. Rep. No. 92-743, p. 11 (1972). The true doubt rule has been applied in these benefits adjudications for more than 15 years, see, e. g., Black Lung—A Study in Occupational Disease Compensation (1976), reprinted in Black Lung Benefits Reform Act, 1976: Hearings on H. R. 10760 and S. 3183 before the Subcommittee on Labor of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 94th Cong., 2d Sess., 459, 488-489 (1976) ("[C]onflicts in the evidence are required to be resolved by the adjudicator in favor of the claimant"); Pro-vance v. United States Steel Corp., 1 BLR 1-483, 485-486 (Benefits Rev. Bd. 1978), and the Secretary's true doubt rule fully comports with Congress's "expectation that the Secretary of Labor will promulgate standards which give the benefit of any doubt to the coal miner." S. Rep. No. 95-209, p. 13 (1977); see 43 Fed. Reg. 36826 (1978).
The court below did not deny the harmony of the true
doubt rule with congressional policy in these cases, but it held instead that the use of the true doubt rule in BLBA
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