ncerity has been well demonstrated to this committee on many preious occasions; we also welcome our former colleague from Oklaoma, my former chairman of the Interior Department Subcommitee on Appropriations, Judge Jed Johnson, of the Customs Court.

SUMMARY JUSTIFICATION DATA

We will turn to the Customs Court item and insert at this time, if here is no objection, page 45 of the justifications, a statement relatng appropriation estimates to current appropriations, as well as age 46, a statement showing analysis by objects, salaries, and xpenses, United States Customs Court.

(The statements referred to follow :)

Mr. ROONEY. The item we are concerned with will also be found n page 12 of the committee print.

ESTIMATES, 1950, AND APPROPRIATION, 1949

I note that the amount requested for the fiscal year 1950, $424,500, s quite a bit in excess of the 1949 appropriation, of $356,400. It that orrect?

Judge OLIVER. That is correct.

Mr. ROONEY. $16,500 of this increase is for Public Law 900, the alary increases; and an increase of $48,000 in appropriation.

FUNCTIONS AND ACTIVITIES OF THE COURT

Suppose at this time, Judge Oliver, for the benefit of the new members, you describe the functions of the customs court.

Judge OLIVER. I will be brief, Mr. Chairman, because I assume that even the new members must have some general knowledge of the work of the United States Customs Court. I understand that the Assistant Attorney General in charge of customs appeared before your committee yesterday and probably had something to say, so I will not duplicate to any great extent.

But I would like to point out for the benefit of the new members of the committee, some of the court's activities. There is no court in the country quite like the United States Customs Court. It differs from all district courts and every other Federal, State, and municipal court in the country.

We have a highly specialized practice and have our own special published reports. We have a highly trained personnel and the cases that come before us frequently involve large sums of money. One case recently submitted for decision involving shark livers, I understand. involves some $4,000,000. We had another case involving $2,500,000 just recently.

In that connection all of the actions brought in our court are against the Government seeking to have refunded to the importer sums of money which he claims were illegally exacted. During all the period in which these claims are in litigation, whether it be a question of value or on protest against the classification of merchandise, the Government has the money. The Government pays no interest, and when the importer gets his refund, if he is successful, he receives back the money he has paid in excess, but no interest.

We handle every possible question that could arise out of the importation of merchandise, other than criminal matters, smuggling, and narcotics, which come under the district courts at the points where the crime is alleged to have been committed.

While we have our headquarters in New York, we travel throughout the country. There are nine judges in our court and they sit in three divisions of three judges each.

The merchandise, when imported, is assigned to one of these divisions, based upon the particular schedules in the tariff act. Even the question of the constitutionality of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, has come before us. We have certain original questions that arise from time to time such as protests against classification; appeals for reappraisement, where the question of value is involved; questions of exchange and currency matters; and many others.

The value of merchandise upon which the duty is levied is not necessarily the price paid for the article. A typical example might be that of a man with $10,000 who goes over to buy some Persian rugs and he gets them for a 50-percent discount. But when he gets them over here he pays a duty upon the value of the merchandise, based not on what he paid for it but on its actual value, in the foreign market. The question of what is value, is one of the most heavily litigated questions we have had in our court. The value and the price paid are not synonymous terms at all.

The highly specialized nature of our work requires people who are skilled in this particular branch of the law.

Mr. ROONEY. How many judges comprise the court? Judge OLIVER. There are nine judges, exactly in the same status the district court judges; they receive the same salaries, are apinted by the President and must receive confirmation by the Senate. hey have the same tenure of office, that is, during good behavior, hich means good official behavior. They may retire at 70 years of ge after having served 10 years on the bench, at full pay for life. he requirement is the same as for those in the United States district urts.

We hold court at ports of entry all over the United States and in awaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico. I might add that ports of entry the early colonial days meant ports at which ships docked for the urpose of unloading their cargo, which meant seaport towns and ties, but today Denver, Colo., or Omaha, Nebr., are just as much orts of entry as New York, Philadelphia, Boston, or New Orleans. Thus, a ship may put in at New York and the merchandise taken f and put in bond. It is then transferred, still in Government cusdy, to the customs warehouse at an interior point.

In our court, as some of you may know, one case may decide 100 her cases, where we have a test case. That applies particularly to assification cases.

The protest part of the court is usually the heaviest, that is, protests gainst classification. At this time the new cases filed do not show uch change. The volume sometimes goes down or goes up very pidly.

The value cases, which are appeals for reappraisement, have in the st few months increased over 100 percent and at the rate they are bing they possibly will have increased 125 to 130 percent for the tire year.

These value cases are of particular interest because the chaotic ondition of the world is such that you cannot try a value case today nd use it as controlling upon later cases.

For instance, you might have a protest case, involving an article hich the collector says is dutiable as a toy but the importer claims it a musical instrument, which carries a lower duty rate. In an appeal or reappraisement, conditions resulting from black market transacons, foreign exchange, and many other factors affect the actual value pon which duty should be paid.

After the value of the merchandise has been established by the opraiser the collector classifies the article holding, for instance, the rticle to be a toy carrying a duty of 70 percent, but the merchant omes in and protests claiming it to be dutiable at 35 percent as a usical instrument.

It is at that point that the question of classification is presented to s in the form of a written protest, wherein the importer protests the etion of the collector in assessing what is claimed to be an erroneous ate of duty.

Then you have a great many other issues of fact that come before he court. We have no juries. A protest case is tried before a banc f three judges in one of the three divisions of the court.

A reappraisement case is tried before a single judge, and an appeal rom this single judge goes to a division of our court, of which he is ot a member, as an appellate court.

Appeals in protest cases go directly to the Court of Customs and Patents Appeals in the Internal Revenue Building, and from there, when certiorari is granted, to the Supreme Court.

That in general is an outline of the functions of the court. If there are any further details you want me to discuss I will be glad to do so. Mr. ROONEY. I want to ask you a question or two.

Judge OLIVER. Yes.

Mr. ROONEY. When you make a decision, deciding that a certain amount of money that had been paid as duty is in excess of the amount required by law and should be returned to the litigant, does your award bear interest?

Judge OLIVER. No interest is allowed. The merchant does not allow much time to lapse between the time he gets a decision in his favor and the collection of the amount allowed by way of refund.

Mr. ROONEY. No interest is paid under the award, where he has previously paid money into the Federal Treasury and it is returned to him?

Judge OLIVER. Not in customs cases, and that is why I told you that in the beginning.

Now there is one other matter I would like to mention. Due to the fact that the complexion of those serving on this committee changes so frequently from year to year I have lost what I consider to be a very valuable point that I have tried to make, and I know that Mr. Stefan, who has served on this committee before will bear me out, and Mr. Rooney has heard me say the same thing: That I may have made a mistake-in not asking for more money than I expected to receive.

Year after year I have studiously avoided that attitude, and all down through the years, when we have had a cut we have accepted it, and have gone back and tried to carry on as best we could.

We have repaired our equipment until we have got to the point where it is no longer economical. There is no one who has appeared before you who is more concerned about a real, constructive, and practical application of economy, right down through the years before the various committees, and the records of the committee will bear me out in that.

I have always said that we would ask only for the money we actually needed.

Repeatedly we have returned money to the Treasury. Someone may make the point that if we could do that it demonstrates the fact that we have asked for more money than we should have received.

That is not so. The answer is that we have run our court on a sound basis and we feel that we can come to your committee and say, when we have not used this money that was granted to us that you are not going to say to us that we should be cut because you have given us funds that we have not used.

Where we have found ourselves with extra funds we did not, during the last 60 days of the fiscal year, undertake to spend the money. but we have returned it to the Treasury, and the records for the past will bear that out.

I have said previously to other committees, and I say to you gentlemen, that we have tried to economize in the operation of the court, and

ow when we ask for a little extra personnel, and funds to buy books, nd other necessities, we expect to get it.

We are now asking for some extra personnel. I am not going to ke any more of your time, because Judge Jed Johnson is here and want him to discuss one or two points with you in which he is parcularly interested, some extra personnel and some of the smaller ems that we have down here for miscellaneous expenses and for some pewriters.

We need a little extra money for traveling expenses. I remember hat the budget last year allowed us traveling expenses, and an inrease in miscellaneous items, because every item in the budget has one up in price. I do not have to argue that point to you gentlemen. If there is any particular item you want me to explain I will be glad o go into the details, but I thought I would just generalize.

We are asking here for an additional appropriation for 1950. The iggest item is $37,000 to additional secretaries, or I will term them stenographer-typist." One extra stenographer-typist for each judge. I am going to pass over that and I am going to ask Judge Johnson, who has given a good deal of consideration to this, to discuss some of he items.

PERSONAL SERVICES

Mr. ROONEY. The amount of $40,900 includes the Public Law 900 equirements?

Judge OLIVER. That is right. There is an item having to do with a awyer and stenographer who are required for indexing the decisions of the court, and of our appellate court.

Mr. ROONEY. How many new employees are contemplated in this tem of $40,900?

Judge OLIVER. Eleven.

Mr. ROONEY. One stenographer for each of the nine judges?
Judge OLIVER. Yes.

Mr. ROONEY. Plus two others?

Mr. BAND. A stenographer and a lawyer to do the indexing.

Mr. ROONEY. A new stenographer and new lawyer to handle the ndex work?

Judge OLIVER. Yes. The salaries are not very high; we have a very low rate.

Mr. ROONEY. How much?

Mr. BAND. $4,906, plus $330.

Mr. ROONEY. How much for the stenographer?

Mr. BAND, $2,645,

Judge OLIVER. A CAF-5.

Mr. ROONEY. How much for each of the nine stenographers?
Mr. BAND. The same rate, $2,645.

Judge OLIVER. Just one other word in regard to the work of the index lawyer and stenographer. For the preparation of the digest the Government formerly paid $10,000 a year. That man died in 1941, and with him the digest and supplements. Now each judge has to keep his own loose-leaf and card index, which he can readily do of his own decisions, but he cannot possibly do it for the other judges of the other divisions, or of the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals. We are preparing decisions for publication, and it is very possible