agreement, and the considerations relied upon by the Court to reverse the Commission's determination of the value of the destroyed house:

[The United States and Japan] [e]ach disclaimed legal liability for injuries visited upon the Micronesians during the war, but agreed to contribute ex gratia the equivalent of $5 million to a fund, to be administered by the United States as trustee, for the satisfaction of all Micronesian "presecure" claims those arising before the islands were secured to the United States.

... Congress enacted the Micronesian Claims Act of 1971 [50 U.S.C. App. 2018-2020b (Supp. II, 1972)]. The act established a five-member Micronesian Claims Commission to distribute . . . the presecure fund . . . . Initial decisions were to be made on the basis of the claimant's filing and a hearing was to become available only upon request of a claimant dissatisfied with the initial award... Section 2020 of the act [sic] provided additionally that

any such settlements made by such Commission and any such payments made by the Secretary [of the Interior] under the authority of title I ... shall be final and conclusive for all purposes, notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary and not subject to review.

. . . To facilitate disposition of claims . . . the Commission conducted interviews and examined records of various sorts in order to get a composite picture of the average wartime values of goods. and services in Micronesia. The results of this survey were assembled in a guide about 40 pages in length, resembling a price list, which was frequently updated and expanded as the need arose. In its 1973 annual report, the Commission explained that the study was consulted "in the absence of better evidence" on the issue of value and that sparse presentations by claimants often made such consultation

necessary.

... Ralpho filed a claim for the destruction of his house. The only information in the filing that could have given the Commission a clue to its value was Ralpho's estimate of $234.40 as the amount of damage and his statement that the structure was 32 by 34 feet in size. The Commission's August 15, 1973, award. . . declared that the Commission had made the study and that, "unon consideration of the record, including the Commission's study," Ralpho was entitled to $370. In the study, the value of a "Trukese" style house was listed as 34 cents per square foot, and at that rate Ralpho's house was worth $369.92.

Ralpho requested a hearing and thereafter, on January 7, 1974, his counsel asked that the value study be made available for inspection and copying under the Freedom of Information Act. This request the Commission's chief counsel refused. At the hearing on January 17, Ralpho testified that the materials with which the house was constructed, which he purchased from his employer for $210.96, would have cost $234.40 if bought elsewhere. He estimated the value of the family labor used at $86.73. Another witness, by stipulation an expert carpenter, testified that in 1940 Ralpho's house would

have cost $656.32 to build. The Commission's post-hearing award merely recited the evidence and gave Ralpho $298 for the house. Thereafter, the value study was released to Ralpho's counsel and Ralpho moved for reconsideration, but that request was denied.

This litigation then commenced. The gravamen of Ralpho's complaint is that the Commission's reliance on the "secret evidence" in the value study without affording Ralpho the opportunity to examine and rebut it is a violation of due process, of the Commission's own regulations, of the law of the Trust Territory, and of the United States' obligation under the United Nations Charter and the Trusteeship Agreement.

The district court dismissed the action, evidently for lack of subject matter jurisdiction since it construed section 2020, the aforementioned finality provision of the Micronesian Claims Act, to preclude review ..

Neither party contests characterization of the Micronesian Claims Commission as an "agency" within the coverage of the Administrative Procedure Act, and we think that characterization is correct. The Commission's main contention is that the legislation of which it is a creature precludes any judicial review of its actions, no matter how offensive to the statute or to the Constitution. This position must be evaluated by the Administrative Procedure Act, which, in general, invites judicial scrutiny of the broadest gauge. That invitation is qualified only "to the extent that . . . statutes preclude judicial review," thus requiring courts to ascertain the degree to which Congress may fairly be said to have contemplated that the sole check on bureaucratic activity would be "the self-restraint of the executive branch."

Ralpho claims, inter alia, that the Commission's putative reliance on evidence to which he had neither access nor opportunity to address violates the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. At the outset, we note that whatever the merit of this position, that constitutional provision binds the Commission and Ralpho is entitled to demand its protections [E]ven under the most restrictive standard it is settled that "there cannot exist under the American flag any governmental authority untrammeled by the requirements of due process of law. [Calero-Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U.S. 663, 669 n. 5 (1974), quoting Mora v. Mejias, 206 F.2d 377, 382 (1st Cir. 1953).] Of course, the United States does not hold the Trust Territory in fee simple, as it were, but rather as a trustee [see 1 M. Whiteman, Digest of International Law § 41 at 777-778 (1963)]; yet this is irrelevant to the question. That the United States is answerable to the United Nations for its treatment of the Micronesians does not give Congress greater leeway to disregard the fundamental rights and liberties of a people as much American subjects as those in other American territories. We thus find the actions of the United States in the Trust Territories constrained by due process.

The Micronesian Claims Act provides that the Commission "shall have authority to . . . adjudicate, and render final decisions, in accordance with the laws of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands and international law." Since the Code of the Trust Territory, promulgated by the Territory's American-appointed High Commissioner, specifically guarantees to its inhabitants the protections of due process, and since fair procedure in the administration of justice is equally important in the contemplation of international law-which is a part of our law [Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino, 376 U.S. 398, 423 (1964) and id at 451-453 (White, J. dissentting) -Ralpho urges that the Commission's action in this case contravenes the act as well as the Constitution

[W]e hold that section 2020 of the act [sic], though it prohibits review in the usual case, does not forestall judicial cognizance of plaints that the Commission has disregarded unambiguous statutory directives or, as detailed above, constitutional commands.

This holding is consistent not only with logic and judicial precedent, but also with the Nation's commitment to the Micronesian people and to the United Nations. In the Trusteeship Agreement, whence Congress' power in the Trust Territory flows, we bound ourselves to "encourage respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all" in our dealings in Micronesia. Whether or not that pledge amounts to a legally enforceable guaranty of substantive rights to the inhabitants of the Trust Territory, it must be taken as an expression of moral principle not lightly to be disregarded. Were Congress effectively to frustrate Ralpho's ability to obtain judicial redress for an allegedly serious violation of his "fundamental freedoms," it would to that extent call into question the seriousness of our devotion to that principle. This we will not do without a clearer mandate from Congress.

. . . In any event, we hold that the result of [the Commission's] apparently aimless obduracy-Ralpho's complaint that a statutory directive was disregarded, and possibly even a constitutional imperative is subject to judicial review. So, we reverse the judgment of the district court and remand the case to it for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

U.S. App. D.C., No. 75–2088, pp. 5-43 (footnotes omitted). Petition for rehearing denied Sept. 12, 1977.

In a second opinion decided on March 29, 1977, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed and remanded to the District Court the case of Melong v. Micronesian Claims Commission (76-1201), ruling that the standard used by the Commission to determine the amounts to be awarded to survivors of those inhabitants of Micronesia who died as a result of the hostilities of World War II contravened the statute creating the Commission. The opinion of Circuit Judge Spottswood W. Robinson, III, found that though

the Micronesian Claims Act of 1971 deals with the ex gratia settlement of Micronesian war claims and thus disregards questions of culpability for war claims under international law, the statute nevertheless directs the Commission to use damage indicies available in international law and the law of the Trust Territory.

The Commission had ruled that such indices were inapplicable. Subsequently, the appellants brought suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The district court dismissed the appellants' challenge to the award standards used by the Commission on the ground that the act did not permit the district court to conduct such a review. Relying in part on the finding in Ralpho v. Bell, infra, that there is some limited scope to review the activities of the Commission, the court of appeals remanded the case to the district court with instructions to vacate the challenged awards of the Commission and to direct the Commission to redetermine the awards in a manner not inconsistent with the Court's opinion.

Portions of the opinion appear below:

Melong Laitak died as a result of the conflict in Micronesia between the United States and Japan during World War II. When, over 25 years later, the Commission was established to deal with claims of loss arising from those hostilities, his survivors, appellants here, filed a claim form, praying for recompense of $11,000. On the basis of their filing, the Commission issued its first opinion allowing the claim but incorporating a strikingly different assessment of the appropriate award. This initial decision acknowledged the Commission's statutory duty to resolve claims "in accordance with the laws of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands and international law," yet it eschewed reliance on either territorial or international wrongful-death recovery rules-which, like regulations applied in war-claims programs elsewhere in the Pacific theatre, had as their goal compensation of survivors for "pecuniary damages sustained by them" [5 Hackworth, Digest of International Law 747 (1943)] as a result of their loss. Those compensatory standards, operable as they were on an evidentiary showing, were perceived as inconvenient because "memories have dimmed and documents are much more difficult, and sometimes impossible, to obtain." Instead, the Commission devised a chart setting, for all cases, the quantum of recovery entirely by the decedent's age at death. Using this chart and Melong's age of 27 at death, the Commission awarded his survivors $4,400.

Melong's survivors then availed themselves of the mechanism for administrative reconsideration, following which the Commission promulgated a final decision cleaving to the measure of recovery it had previously elected but drastically revamping its reasoning. The keystone of its new rationale was the ex gratia denomination of

payments under the Micronesian Claims Act, for it read the congressional invocation of Trust Territory and international law [see footnote 3] as directing it only to those laws pertaining to ex gratia war claims. Territorial and international wrongful-death principles were dismissed as "clearly inapplicable" because rooted in culpability rather than charity. . . .

The Commission asks us to believe that Congress purported to bind it to the imperatives of international and local law in order merely to demonstrate the degree to which the Commission was unfettered by any legal norm, and so might act with impunity. . . . The Act recites, to be sure, that its mission is er gratia settlement of Micronesian war claims-ex gratia because both the United States and Japan have historically denied any responsibility to satisfy them. Just as assuredly, Congress intended the Commission to disregard questions of culpability under international law in deciding whether claims were to be allowed, and to debar no one simply because a nation's culpable involvement in a death could not be shown.2 Yet the statute implicitly, and its legislative history positively, require consideration and adjudication of claims to be otherwise "in accordance with" international law standards. And international law, though it imposes liability for death caused by unlawful activities during hostilities, and prescribes there for recovery equal to the pecuniary loss consequentially suffered by survivors, assesses no liability whatever for death resulting from war lawfully conducted, and provides, of course, no "rule" at all for determining awards therefor. The Commission's ex gratia interpretation, with its built-in premise that neither the United States nor Japan contributed culpably to any Micronesian death, would permit blithe disregard of every measure of damages discoverable in international law, and change it only to heed a nonexistent rule. Clearly no such outcome was contemplated by Congress . . .

... Trust Territory law gives compensatory damages for wrongful death but, not surprisingly, embodies no principles regarding war claims, much less guidelines for ex gratia awards deriving from deaths inflicted in derogation of no legal norm. Thus the Commission, by narrowing its perspective to encompass only ex gratia programs for Micronesians, would ignore territorial law as it is, and hypothesize rules of law that do not and never did exist in the Trust Territory

*

[W]e find the unmistakable directive of the statute to be that the Commission utilize the indices of damages available in international and Trust Territory law

150 U.S.C. App. § 2019 (a) (Supp. II 1972):

It is the purpose of this title... that, with respect to war claims, the United States should make an ex gratia contribution . . · matching an equivalent contribution of the Government of Japan, to Micronesian inhabitants of the Trust Territory. . . .