ordinates of these officials appear and discuss matters that these organizations ask us to discuss.

As a matter of fact, aside from the formal discussion there are panei discussions where you answer questions which are propounded, extemporaneously, by the assembled representatives of the organizations, on any matter that they are interested in.

The appearance that you speak of before the American Legion in Chicago followed the release by the chairman of this committee of a letter to all of the major organizations saying that he planned to conduct hearings on the subject you are now concerned with, and asking the organizations to consider the matter at their next annual convention and formulate positions and be in a position to advise the committee when called on to do so.

Well, the VFW and the American Legion both asked that I discuss this very subject with them, and throughout these discussions, recog nizing the very things I think you have in mind, I have exerted the utmost care to observe properties and to make certain that it was a discussion, that it was conveying facts, that it was discussing the pros and cons, and my sole aim was to insure, to the extent I could contribute, at their invitation, that the organizations acted on as informed a basis as possible.

I have not attempted, and do not now attempt, to sway anyone. As I think I stated in Chicago-and I could check this, because I have a record of it—I was very careful to say that what position you take is for your collective judgment, the people who make the policy, and not for me to attempt to ram anything down your throats.

Mr. MORSE. I would just like to add one comment to that, Mr. Saylor. The procedure that Mr. Stancil describes is an accurate one, with which I am sure you are familiar, these invitations, and Mr. Stancil, I recall personally, was extremely sensitive about his participation in response to these invitations, because of the apprehension that this sort of aura might be created.

I discussed it with him before his participation with one of the groups of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, I remember, and he clearly pointed out to me what he saw to be the danger of his participating, and stated to me his insistence that he attend merely or totally as an impartial reservoir of fact.

Mr. SAYLOR. Very frankly, I think the close coordination between the veterans' organizations and the Veterans' Administration is desirable. However, I do not expect the Veterans' Administration to be there advocating its own policy or a policy. It is up to Congress to determine what the policy is.

Mr. MORSE. Yes, sir.

Mr. SAYLOR. And that is to be carried out by the people who are there.

In the meantime, as far as facts are concerned, I have no hesitancy in saying that I think your organization should deliver to every veterans' organization, all the facts possible, and I do not think they should attempt to sway them one way or another.

Mr. STANCIL. If I may say, if you please, Mr. Saylor, I believe this will clarify some of the material you referred to that was put in the record yesterday. As to the letter you read here this morning to the Legion, wherein I said that certain material had been developed

at the request of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and I was furnishing it to the Legion as well, the form and content of the material which Mr. Corcoran submitted to you gentlemen attached to that letter was determined by a list of specific requests and questions that the VFW propounded to me, which is in my file, and if, out of this study of your record material, there develops any desire on the part of the committee to go further into the correspondence and written record of the development of the exchange, I will be happy to open my complete files, and submit anything you wish. It is above question. Mr. TEAGUE of California. I am just a little curious, Mr. Saylor; as long as I can remember, the Cabinet members and their assistants have appeared before these groups.

The Secretary of Labor is always appearing before the A.F. of L. and the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture is always appearing before agricultural people, and so forth, and I just wonder whether your observation would apply equally well to Cabinet members, all executive officials, or do we have a different situation where the Veterans' Administration is concerned?

Mr. SAYLOR. I do not know whether or not there is a difference, but certainly the Administrator might be in the position of someone that you can compare to a Cabinet officer. Certainly no one else, in my opinion, is in the position of taking that same prerogative.

In other words, this agency exists because Congress created it, and if Congress tomorrow wants to abolish it, it is within the province of the Members of Congress, to do it. I am not looking forward to the fact it is going to be abolished.

Mr. QUIGLEY. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SAYLOR. Surely.

Mr. QUIGLEY. I do not want to correct you, but it is my understanding the Secretary of Agriculture no longer dares to appear before agricultural people.

Mr. TEAGUE of California. Yes; he does. He is in their good graces.

Mr. MORSE. Mr. Chairman, if I may amplify a bit, Mr. Saylor's comment, I can say that I agree in general with everything Mr. Saylor says. I do think, however, that the Administrator, going specifically to him, has a responsibility to serve as principal adviser to the President on matters affecting veterans' affairs, and has a policy responsibility there.

We certainly recognize and respect the primary responsibility of the Congress of the United States, and I agree with what you say, and I know that Mr. Stancil does.

Mr. STANCIL. Yes. However, I would like to add one word, if I may.

In using the word "policy," I think you had in mind something like the creation of this court or the function of the Board of Veterans Appeals. Certainly, I should not go out and attempt to lobby against pending legislation, and this I have been very careful to avoid even giving the appearance of trying to do.

Now, as far as discussing policy in a much broader sense, you can hardly avoid policy discussions with the service organizations in their rehabilitation conferences when questions are thrown at you and there is an exchange, but I think that is not the kind of policy to which you are referring.

Mr. SAYLOR. That is right; that is not the policy I was referring to, and no one is trying to throttle anybody's expression as a citizen, whether it is for the Veterans' Administration or any other agency of the Government. After all, we are still American citizens and have basic rights. Sometimes we do come down to the fact of where you appear and make speeches, and those speeches must be limited, I think, to the existing situation, or a factual presentation of a bill that might be pending.

I do not think that it would behoove anybody to comment on whether they should or should not be passed. Those are resolutions which the veterans' organizations themselves, I believe, should take up.

Has there been, Mr. Stancil, in the Board of Veterans Appeals, any definite sign that there is a disagreement on any number of cases? By that, I mean has there been any minority opinion written?

Mr. STANCIL. As you pointed out in citing statistics, one of the prior days of the hearings, in a relatively small number of cases there have been dissenting opinions, which is what we call them. I think that is the same thing you are referring to.

Yes, there are dissenting opinions, and I have stated on many occasions that any Board member is to feel free to dissent in any case where he does not subscribe to the majority view.

I gathered the other day that you were dissatisfied with the number. I might clarify that situation a little bit by saying that from my experience as an associate member myself, there is frequent discussion and dissent among the three members in discussing a case. Many times that is worked out, for example, by agreement to remand the case for further development, which will then satisfy everyone concerned. But, in the final analysis, when all the facts are in, our practices permit dissents, and we do have dissents; not so many, I gather, as you think would be in order.

Mr. QUIGLEY. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. SAYLOR. Certainly.

Mr. QUIGLEY. Might I ask the chairman of the Board of Veterans Appeals what useful purpose is served by a member writing a dissenting opinion?

Mr. STANCIL. As a matter of law, the unanimous opinion of a threeman section is the final appellate decision, under the present law. If there is a dissent, it can be resolved by either the chairman concurring with the majority members or what is more generally done, adding another section to the Board and creating a larger Board, and meeting with this enlarged group and discussing the case, and letting the majority vote govern, with the chairman breaking a tie if there is a tie. Now, insofar as a dissenting opinion affecting the decision, the actual writing of a dissenting opinion after the fact would merely record the views of the dissenter, the same as in any judicial or quasijudicial body.

Writing a dissenting opinion before the final conclusion is reached would serve the purpose of conveying the views of the dissenter for whatever impact it might have on me as the chairman, in determining whether I would approve the majority opinion, or whatever impact it might have on the other members of an enlarged group.

Is this what you had in mind, sir?

Mr. QUIGLEY. Yes. I was thinking-it occurs to me that the your Board functions and human nature being what it is, all of us being lazy, as we are, and all of us being as busy as we are, there is no particular reason why a dissenting member would take the time and trouble and effort and all of that sort of thing, to spell out his dissenting views, the way our judges do.

Mr. STANCIL. Yes.

Mr. QUIGLEY. And there is no good purpose in it, as I see it here. Mr. STANCIL. Sir, I think you are visualizing a more formal procedure than is necessarily the case. In the three-man section, if one member dissents from the views of the other two, if the other two have signed the decision, and he dissents, he need not write a very formal or lengthy dissenting opinion.

As a matter of fact, the case can be submitted to me with an informal communication from him, outlining the basis of his dissent, and I can convene an enlarged group and this can then be argued and explored orally within the discussion by the enlarged group. This is being done.

Mr. TEAGUE of California. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SAYLOR. Yes.

Mr. TEAGUE of California. It occurred to me there is another possible advantage:

It might be that there would be another case almost on all fours, and maybe a month later, or 6 months later, or a year later, and this case was referred to a different panel, and if this record on the previous case were made available to the new panel, then the fact that there was one dissent might have some influence on the new panel.

Mr. QUIGLEY. Could I pursue it a little further for my own information?

How much of a doctrine of stare decisis does the Board follow? Say the Board at this time were made up of the three of us up here, and say there was an identical case, or a case as identical as possible, and say it came up 6 months later, to be decided by you three gentlemen, would it just be by happenstance that one of you gentlemen might know about this earlier case or would it be brought to your attention that the case you are now considering would be on all fours with one decided by the three of us, 6 months ago? It strikes me that the Board is not that judicial in its application.

Mr. STANCIL. It might or might not be, depending on what is involved. A great deal of effort is expended to achieve uniformity, particularly in broad policy areas, as distinguished from the fine factual situations that are involved. The cases, of course, are all a little different, factually. The regulations themselves, which are rather detailed, are designed to achieve uniformity in the factual determinations. There are precedents that are published in the form of Administrator's decisions that constitute precedents.

Each individual appellate decision, however, is not printed and published and kept as a precedent. It is an individual case decision in an individual case folder. Where certain cases that we get in the Board involve questions requiring a good deal of research, or we think will have some precedent, if I may use that word loosely, value for us in future cases, we will digest it and maintain an informal digest record of these cases within the Board to which you, as a member of a

section now, can have access, to see if there has been a similar case on the point that is disturbing you, a case in the past.

Mr. QUIGLEY. I would not be bound by it, though, would I?

Mr. STANCIL. No; you would not be bound. You are bound by regulations, you are bound by instructions of the Administrator, and, as a Board member, you are bound by the Administrator's decisions.

Mr. QUIGLEY. What do you mean when you use the words "informal digest"? Describe that.

Mr. STANCIL. I mean we preserve a copy of that decision, and we digest it and then index it and keep an index'record, where you have access to this material in a particular office within the Board of Veterans Appeals, but it is not a formal published thing.

Mr. QUIGLEY. How many cases do you do that on?

Mr. STANCIL. I would have to get that information for you, sir. It is not a substantial percentage of the total, though.

Mr. QUIGLEY. Who makes the decision as to which cases will be informally digested?

Mr. STANCIL. The Chairman of each section of the Board decides, when the case is released, if the particular case is to be digested. That is not the Chairman of the Board, but the Chief of each section.

Mr. QUIGLEY. There again you could have one Chief who feels that every case he passes judgment on in his Board deserves to be digested, and another Chief of different temperament will decide that none of them should be digested.

Mr. STANCIL. No, sir. I should have gone further. The Chief of each section will indicate whether he believes the case should be digested, and then I have a digest committee, which reviews all of the proposals and recommends to me whether the case should be digested, and I mark it "Approved," or "Not approved for digest," in the final analysis. This only originates from the Chief of the section, and then goes through my digest committee.

Mr. QUIGLEY. How accessible would it be to the various members? For instance, could I be functioning on a case for 3 weeks, and then suddenly discover the whole thing had been considered quite seriously, a year and a half ago, and I was not even aware of it?

Mr. STANCIL. No. This index is in a small room, with library tables, and a few reference books, but it is not by any sense of the word a duplication of the medical library or the law library that we have upstairs, but it is a small library of our own, and it is available on a day-in-day-out basis, throughout the entire working day, to any associate member or consultant, or anyone on the Board who needs to have access to this reference library.

Mr. QUIGLEY. I do not want to impose on the gentleman's time, but I just want to say this: I am not as critical of the Board as my colleague from Pennsylvania appears to be. I am not interested in sitting here and second guessing you on a lot of cases particularly, but I just want to bring it down to the issue, as far as I am concerned.

I think we will concede, for the record, that the Board is not infallible; is that right?

Mr. STANCIL. Yes.

May I add one thing on the digest before we leave that?

A copy of each digest that is approved is circulated among the professional staff, so as to acquaint them with the cases that have been