378
Opinion of the Court
factual findings become simply a revision of the standard that the Board's (adjudicatorily adopted) rules set forth, thereby converting those findings into rule interpretations to which judges must defer—the "substantial evidence" factual review provision of the Administrative Procedure Act becomes a nullity.
The Board can, of course, forthrightly and explicitly adopt counterfactual evidentiary presumptions (which are in effect substantive rules of law) as a way of furthering particular legal or policy goals—for example, the Board's irrebuttable presumption of majority support for the union during the year following certification, see, e. g., Station KKHI, 284 N. L. R. B. 1339, 1340 (1987), enf'd, 891 F. 2d 230 (CA9 1989). The Board might also be justified in forthrightly and explicitly adopting a rule of evidence that categorically excludes certain testimony on policy grounds, without reference to its inherent probative value. (Such clearly announced rules of law or of evidentiary exclusion would of course be subject to judicial review for their reasonableness and their compatibility with the Act.) That is not the sort of Board action at issue here, however, but rather the Board's allegedly systematic undervaluation of certain evidence, or allegedly systematic exaggeration of what the evidence must prove. See, e. g., Westbrook Bowl, 293 N. L. R. B. 1000, 1001, n. 11 (1989) ("The Board has stated that 'testimony concerning conversations directly with the employees involved . . . is much more reliable than testimony concerning merely a few employees ostensibly conveying the sentiments of their fellows' "), quoting Sofco, Inc., 268 N. L. R. B. 159, 160, n. 10 (1983). When the Board purports to be engaged in simple factfinding, unconstrained by substantive presumptions or evidentiary rules of exclusion, it is not free to prescribe what inferences from the evidence it will accept and reject, but must draw all those inferences that the evidence fairly demands. "Substantial evidence" review exists precisely to ensure that the Board achieves minimal compliance with this obliga-
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