Ingalls Shipbuilding, Inc. v. Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, 519 U.S. 248, 24 (1997)

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Cite as: 519 U. S. 248 (1997)

Opinion of Scalia, J.

both agencies and private parties. I respectfully dissent from the Court's judgment on this issue.

Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 15(a) provides:

"Review of an order of an administrative agency, board, commission, or officer (hereinafter, the term 'agency' will include agency, board, commission, or officer) must be obtained by filing [a petition for review]. . . . In each case the agency must be named respondent."

It is clear (and the Court does not say otherwise) that despite the Rule's shorthand use of "agency" in the second sentence, the entity that must be named respondent is the one whose order is under review, whether it is an agency, board, commission, or officer. Thus, in determining whether the Rule authorizes the Director, as representative of the Department of Labor, to appear as a respondent in the courts of appeals, the central question is whether the order under review is that of the Department. The answer to that question is obviously and unavoidably no.

To begin with, the very statute that provides for the judicial review at issue indicates that the order under review is that of the BRB:

"Any person adversely affected or aggrieved by a final order of the Board may obtain a review of that order in the United States court of appeals for the circuit in which the injury occurred . . . . Upon such filing, the court shall have jurisdiction of the proceeding and shall have the power to give a decree affirming, modifying, or setting aside, in whole or in part, the order of the Board . . . ." 44 Stat. 1436-1437, as amended, 33 U. S. C. § 921(c) (emphasis added).

The governing statute elsewhere specifies that the Board is the statutorily created entity responsible for "hear[ing] and determin[ing] appeals . . . taken by any party in interest from decisions with respect to claims of employees under" the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act

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