134 Opinion of the Court. tion of radio broadcasting in the Communications Act of 1934, c. 652, 48 Stat. 1064, as amended by the Act of May 20, 1937, c. 229, 50 Stat. 189; 47 U. S. C. § 151. Adequate appreciation of the facts presently to be summarized requires that they be set in their legislative framework. In its essentials the Communications Act of 1934 derives from the Federal Radio Act of 1927, c. 169, 44 Stat. 1162, as amended, 46 Stat. 844. By this Act Congress, in order to protect the national interest involved in the new and far-reaching science of broadcasting, formulated a unified and comprehensive regulatory system for the industry.' The common factors in the administration of the various statutes by which Congress had supervised the different modes of communication led to the creation, in the Act of 1934, of the Communications Commission. But the objectives of the legislation have remained substantially unaltered since 1927. Congress moved under the spur of a widespread fear that in the absence of governmental control the public interest might be subordinated to monopolistic domination in the broadcasting field. To avoid this Congress provided for a system of permits and licenses. Licenses were not to be granted for longer than three years. Communications Act of 1934, Title iii, § 307 (d). No license was to be "construed to create any right, beyond the terms, conditions, and periods of the license." Ibid., § 301. In granting or withholding permits for the construction of stations, and in granting, denying, modifying or revoking licenses for the operation of stations, "public 'For the legislative history of the Act of 1927, see H. Rep. No. 464, S. Rep. No. 772, 69th Cong., 1st Sess.; 67 Cong. Rec. 5473-5504, 5555-86; 5645-47; 12335-59; 12480, 12497-12508, 12614-18; 68 Cong. Rec. 2556-80, 2750-51, 2869-82, 3025-39, 3117-34, 3257-62, 3329-36, 3569-71, 4109-55. A summary of the operation of previous regulatory laws may be found in Herring and Gross, Telecommunications, pp. 239-45. 134 Opinion of the Court. Against this background the facts of the present case fall into proper perspective. In May, 1936, The Pottsville Broadcasting Company, respondent here, sought from the Commission a permit under § 319 Ibid., Title iii, for the construction of a broadcasting station at Pottsville, Pennsylvania. The Commission denied this application on two grounds: (1) that the respondent was financially disqualified; and (2) that the applicant did not sufficiently represent local interests in the community which the proposed station was to serve. From this denial of its application respondent appealed to the court below. That tribunal withheld judgment on the second ground of the Commission's decision, for it did not deem this to have controlled the Commission's judgment. But, finding the Commission's conclusion regarding the respondent's lack of financial qualification to have been based on an erroneous understanding of Pennsylvania law, the Court of Appeals reversed the decision and ordered the "cause . . . remanded to the . . . Communications Commission for reconsideration in accordance with the views expressed." Pottsville Broadcasting Co. v. "public convenience, interest, or necessity" laid down by the law. "... the commission desires to point out that the test-public interest, convenience, or necessity'-becomes a matter of a comparative and not an absolute standard when applied to broadcasting stations. Since the number of channels is limited and the number of persons desiring to broadcast is far greater than can be accommodated, the commission must determine from among the applicants before it which of them will, if licensed, best serve the public. In a measure, perhaps, all of them give more or less service. Those who give the least, however, must be sacrificed for those who give the most. The emphasis must be first and foremost on the interest, the convenience, and the necessity of the listening public, and not on the interest, convenience, or necessity of the individual broadcaster or the advertiser." Second Annual Report, Federal Radio Commission, 1928, pp. 169-70. ROBERTS, J., dissenting. 309 U.S. Three revenue acts have since been adopted,16 in none of which has the wording of § 302 (c) been altered. If there is any life in the doctrine often announced that reënactment of a statute as uniformly construed by the courts is an adoption by Congress of the construction given it, this legislative history ought to be conclusive that the statute, as it now stands, means what this court has said it means. Little weight can be given to the argument of the Government that the Treasury has not applied to Congress for alteration of the section because of the difficulty of wording a satisfactory amendment. A moment's reflection will show that it would be easy to phrase such an amendment. Whatever the reason for the failure to amend § 302 (c), whether hesitancy on the part of the Treasury to recommend such action, or the satisfaction. of Congress with the construction put upon the section by this court, or mere inadvertence, the fact remains that the section has been reënacted again and again with the courts' construction plain for all to read. 4. As shown by the matter above quoted from the Treasury Regulations affecting the estate tax," a contingent interest is not to be included in the taxable estate. In the light of this construction, estate tax provisions were reënacted or amended in 1921, 1924, 1926, 1928, 1931, 1932, 1934, 1935, 1936 and 1937. At the bar, counsel for the Government stated that it had always been the view of the Treasury that the article in question applied only to § 302 (a) and had no application to § 302 (c). But we are not concerned with what the Treasury thought about the matter. The regulations were issued to guide taxpayers in complying with the Act. Section 302 is an entirety. Subsections (a) and (c) were 16 Revenue Act of 1937, 50 Stat. 813; Revenue Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 447; Internal Revenue Code, 53 Stat., Part 1, p. 1. 17 See Note 3, supra. 106 ROBERTS, J., dissenting. not intended to contradict each other, but the latter was to supplement the former. The gross estate was to be computed according to the section as a whole. It is hard to understand how the taxpayer was expected to discriminate between a contingent interest of a decedent under the will of his grandmother and a similar interest under an absolute deed executed by him inter vivos. If the one did not pass from the decedent at death neither did the other. After the decisions in the St. Louis cases, the Treasury rendered its regulations even more explicit. In Regulations 80 (Revised), promulgated October 26, 1937, a new Article 17 was inserted which is: "The statutory phrase, 'a transfer . . . intended to take effect in possession or enjoyment at or after his death,' includes a transfer by the decedent . . . whereby and to the extent that the beneficial title to the property. . . or the legal title thereto. . . remained in the decedent at the time of his death and the passing thereof was subject to the condition precedent of his death. . . "On the other hand, if, as a result of the transfer, there remained in the decedent at the time of his death no title or interest in the transferred property, then no part of the property is to be included in the gross estate merely by reason of a provision in the instrument of transfer to the effect that the property was to revert to the decedent upon the predecease of some other person or persons or the happening of some other event." If theretofore doubt could have been entertained, it then must have vanished. And with this regulation in force, Congress reënacted § 302 (c) as so interpreted. What, then, is to be said of the principle that reënactment of a statute which the Treasury, by its regulations, has interpreted in a given sense is an embodiment of the interpretation in the law as reënacted? Surely the principle cannot be avoided, as the Government argues, be |