806
Opinion of the Court
ney's fees under Title II of the Social Security Act. Pub. L. 100-203, § 9021(b), 101 Stat. 1330-295. The report, presented to Congress in 1988, reviewed several methods of determining attorney's fees, including the lodestar method. See SSA Report 10-11. This review led the agency to inform Congress that, although the contingency method was hardly flawless, the agency could "identify no more effective means of ensuring claimant access to attorney representation." Id., at 25.
Congress subsequently altered § 406(a) to validate contingent-fee agreements filed with the agency prior to disposition of the claim for benefits. See 42 U. S. C. § 406(a)(2) (1994 ed.); supra, at 795. As petitioners observe, Brief for Petitioners 24, it would be anomalous if contract-based fees expressly authorized by § 406(a)(2) at the administrative level were disallowed for court representation under § 406(b).
It is also unlikely that Congress, legislating in 1965, and providing for a contingent fee tied to a 25 percent of past-due benefits boundary, intended to install a lodestar method courts did not develop until some years later. See supra, at 801-802. Furthermore, we again emphasize, the lodestar method was designed to govern imposition of fees on the losing party. See, e. g., Dague, 505 U. S., at 562. In such cases, nothing prevents the attorney for the prevailing party from gaining additional fees, pursuant to contract, from his own client. See Venegas v. Mitchell, 495 U. S. 82, 89-90 (1990) ("[None] of our cases has indicated that [42 U. S. C.] § 1988 . . . protects plaintiffs from having to pay what they have contracted to pay, even though their contractual liability is greater than the statutory award that they may collect from losing opponents. Indeed, depriving plaintiffs of the option of promising to pay more than the statutory fee if that is necessary to secure counsel of their choice would not further § 1988's general purpose of enabling such plaintiffs . . . to secure competent counsel."). By contrast, § 406(b) governs the total fee a claimant's attorney may receive for court representation; any endeavor by the claimant's attorney to
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