In re Neagle (1890)

135 U.S. 1 (1890)

Decision: Affirmed
Vote: 6-2
Majority: Miller, joined by Bradley, Harlan, Gray, Blatchford, and Brewer
Dissent: Lamar, joined by Fuller
Not participating: Field

Mr. Justice Miller, on behalf of the court, stated the case as follows:

This was an appeal by Cunningham, sheriff of the county of San Joaquin, in the State of California, from a judgment of the Circuit Court of the United States for the Northern District of California, discharging David Neagle from the custody of said sheriff, who held him a prisoner on a charge of murder.

On the 16th day of August, 1889, there was presented to Judge Sawyer, the Circuit Judge of the United States for the Ninth Circuit, embracing the Northern District of California, a petition signed David Neagle, deputy United States marshal, by A. T. Farrish on his behalf. This petition represented that the said Farrish was a deputy marshal duly appointed for the Northern District of California by J. C. Franks, who was the marshal of that district. It further alleged that David Neagle was, at the time of the occurrences recited in the petition and at the time of filing it, a duly appointed and acting deputy United States marshal for the same district. It then proceeded to state that said Neagle was imprisoned, confined and restrained of his liberty in the county jail in San Joaquin County, in the State of California, by Thomas Cunningham, sheriff of said county, upon a charge of murder, under a warrant of arrest, a copy of which was annexed to the petition.

…

The petition then recited the circumstances of a rencontre between said Neagle and David S. Terry, in which the latter was instantly killed by two shots from a revolver in the hands of the former. The circumstances of this encounter and of what led to it will be considered with more particularity hereafter. The main allegation of this petition was that Neagle, as United States deputy marshal, acting under the orders of Marshal Franks, and in pursuance of instructions from the Attorney General of the United States, had, in consequence of an anticipated attempt at violence on the part of Terry against the Honorable Stephen J. Field, a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, been in attendance upon said justice, and was sitting by his side at a breakfast table when a murderous assault was made by Terry on Judge Field, and in defence of the life of the judge, the homicide was committed for which eagle was held by Cunningham. The allegation was very distinct that Justice Field was engaged in the discharge of his duties as circuit justice of the United States for that circuit, having held court at Los Angeles, one of the places at which the Court is by law held, and, having left that court, was on his way to San Francisco for the purpose of holding the Circuit Court at that place. The allegation was also very full that Neagle was directed by Marshal Franks to accompany him for the purpose of protecting him, and that these orders of Franks were given in anticipation of the assault which actually occurred. It was also stated, in more general terms, that Marshal Neagle, in killing Terry under the circumstances, was in the discharge of his duty as an officer of the United States, and was not, therefore, guilty of a murder, and that his imprisonment under the warrant held by Sheriff Cunningham was in violation of the laws and Constitution of the United States, and that he was in custody for an act done in pursuance of the laws of the United States. This petition being sworn to by Farrish, and presented to Judge Sawyer … [Sawyer ordered a writ of habeas corpus and the Sheriff’s office certified that Neagle was held based on a warrant from the township of Stockton.]

…

The hearing in the Circuit Court was had before Circuit Judge Sawyer and District Judge Sabin … A large body of testimony, documentary and otherwise, was submitted to the court, on which, after a full consideration of the subject, the court made the following order:

“In the Matter of David Neagle, on habeas corpus.”

“In the above-entitled matter, the court having heard the testimony introduced on behalf of the petitioner, none having been offered for the respondent, and also the arguments of the counsel for petitioner and respondent, and it appearing to the court that the allegations of the petitioner in his amended answer or traverse to the return of the sheriff of San Joaquin County, respondent herein, are true, and that the prisoner is in custody for an act done in pursuance of a law of the United States, and in custody in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States, it is therefore ordered that petitioner be, and he is hereby, discharged from custody.”

From that order an appeal was allowed which brought the case to this court, accompanied by a voluminous record of all the matters which were before the court on the hearing.

MR. JUSTICE MILLER, after stating the case as above, delivered the opinion of the court.

If it be true, as stated in the order of the court discharging the prisoner, that he was held

“in custody for an act done in pursuance of a law of the United States, and in custody in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States,”

there does not seem to be any doubt that, under the statute on that subject, he was properly discharged by the Circuit Court …

We have no doubt that Mr. Justice Field, when attacked by Terry, was engaged in the discharge of his duties as Circuit Justice of the Ninth Circuit, and was entitled to all the protection under those circumstances which the law could give him.

It is urged, however, that there exists no statute authorizing any such protection as that which Neagle was instructed to give Judge Field in the present case, and indeed no protection whatever against a vindictive or malicious assault growing out of the faithful discharge of his official duties, and that the language of section 753 of the Revised Statutes, that the party seeking the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus must in this connection show that he is “in custody for an act done or omitted in pursuance of a law of the United States,” makes it necessary that, upon this occasion, it should be shown that the act for which Neagle is imprisoned as done by virtue of an act of Congress … But we are of opinion that this view of the statute is an unwarranted restriction of the meaning of a law designed to extend in a liberal manner the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus to persons imprisoned for the performance of their duty. And we are satisfied that, if it was the duty of Neagle, under the circumstances, a duty which could only arise under the laws of the United States, to defend Mr. Justice Field from a murderous attack upon him, he brings himself within the meaning of the section we have recited …

In the view we take of the Constitution of the United States, any obligation fairly and properly inferrible from that instrument, or any duty of the marshal to be derived from the general scope of his duties under the laws of the United States, is “a law” within the meaning of this phrase. It would be a great reproach to the system of government of the United States, declared to be within its sphere sovereign and supreme, if there is to be found within the domain of its powers no means of protecting the judges, in the conscientious and faithful discharge of their duties, from the malice and hatred of those upon whom their judgments may operate unfavorably.

[T]he law, which is intended to prevent crime, in its general spread among the community, by regulations, police organization, and otherwise which are adapted for the protection of the lives and property of citizens, for the dispersion of mobs, for the arrest of thieves and assassins, for the watch which is kept over the community, as well as over this class of people, is more efficient than punishment of crimes after they have been committed.

If a person in the situation of Judge Field could have no other guarantee of his personal safety … [besides] that, if he was murdered, his murderer would be subject to the laws of a State, and by those laws could be punished, the security would be very insufficient. The plan which Terry and wife had in mind of insulting him and assaulting him and drawing him into a defensive physical contest, in the course of which they would slay him, shows the little value of such remedies …

To cite all the cases in which this principle of the supremacy of the government of the United States, in the exercise of all the powers conferred upon it by the Constitution, is maintained would be an endless task. We have selected these as being the most forcible expressions of the views of the court having a direct reference to the nature of the case before us.

Where, then, are we to look for the protection which we have shown Judge Field was entitled to when engaged in the discharge of his official duties? Not to the courts of the United States, because, as has been more than once said in this court, in the division of the powers of government between the three great departments, executive, legislative and judicial, the judicial is the weakest for the purposes of self-protection and for the enforcement of the powers which it exercises …

The legislative branch of the government can only protect the judicial officers by the enactment of laws for that purpose, and the argument we are now combating assumes that no such law has been passed by Congress.

If we turn to the executive department of the government, we find a very different condition of affairs. The Constitution, section 3, Article 2, declares that the President “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” and he is provided with the means of fulfilling this obligation by his authority to commission all the officers of the United States, and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint the most important of them and to fill vacancies. He is declared to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. The duties which are thus imposed upon him he is further enabled to perform by the recognition in the Constitution, and the creation by acts of Congress, of executive departments … These aid him in the performance of the great duties of his office, and represent him in a thousand acts … thus he is enabled to fulfill the duty of his great department, expressed in the phrase that “he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Is this duty limited to the enforcement of acts of Congress or of treaties of the United States according to their express terms, or does it include the rights, duties and obligations growing out of the Constitution itself, our international relations, and all the protection implied by the nature of the government under the Constitution?

… [I]f the President or the Postmaster General is advised that the mails of the United States, possibly carrying treasure, are liable to be robbed and the mail carriers assaulted and murdered in any particular region of country, who can doubt the authority of the President or of one of the executive departments under him to make an order for the protection of the mail and of the persons and lives of its carriers, by doing exactly what was done in the case of Mr. Justice Field, namely, providing a sufficient guard, whether it be by soldiers of the army or by marshals of the United States, with a posse comitatus properly armed and equipped, to secure the safe performance of the duty of carrying the mail wherever it may be intended to go?

…

We cannot doubt the power of the President to take measures for the protection of a judge of one of the courts of the United States who, while in the discharge of the duties of his office, is threatened with a personal attack which may probably result in his death, and we think it clear that, where this protection is to be afforded through the civil power, the Department of Justice is the proper one to set in motion the necessary means of protection …

But there is positive law investing the marshals and their deputies with powers which not only justify what Marshal Neagle did in this matter, but which imposed it upon him as a duty …

That there is a peace of the United States, that a man assaulting a judge of the United States while in the discharge of his duties violates that peace, that, in such case, the marshal of the United States stands in the same relation to the peace of the United States which the sheriff of the county does to the peace of the State of California, are questions too clear to need argument to prove them …

… [I]t is urged against the relief sought by this writ of habeas corpus that the question of the guilt of the prisoner of the crime of murder is a question to be determined by the laws of California and to be decided by its courts, and that there exists no power in the government of the United States to take away the prisoner from the custody of the proper authorities of the State of California and carry him before a judge of the court of the United States, and release him without a trial by jury according to the laws of the State of California. That the statute of the United States authorizes and directs such a proceeding and such a judgment in a case where the offence charged against the prisoner consists in an act done in pursuance of a law of the United States and by virtue of its authority, and where the imprisonment of the party is in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States, is clear by its express language …

If the duty of the United States to protect its officers from violence, even to death, in discharge of the duties which its laws impose upon them, be established, and Congress has made the writ of habeas corpus one of the means by which this protection is made efficient, and if the facts of this case show that the prisoner was acting both under the authority of law and the directions of his superior officers of the Department of Justice, we can see no reason why this writ should not be made to serve its purpose in the present case.

The result at which we have arrived upon this examination is that, in the protection of the person and the life of Mr. Justice Field while in the discharge of his official duties, Neagle was authorized to resist the attack of Terry upon him; that Neagle was correct in the belief that, without prompt action on his part, the assault of Terry upon the judge would have ended in the death of the latter; that, such being his well founded belief, he was justified in taking the life of Terry as the only means of preventing the death of the man who was intended to be his victim; that, in taking the life of Terry, under the circumstances, he was acting under the authority of the law of the United States, and was justified in so doing; and that he is not liable to answer in the courts of California on account of his part in that transaction.

We therefore affirm the judgment of the circuit court authorizing his discharge from the custody of the sheriff of San Joaquin county.

Justice Field did not sit at the hearing of this case, and took no part in its decision.

Excerpted by Alexandria Metzdorf

Ex Parte Grossman (1925)

267 U.S. 87 (1925)

Decision: Reversed
Vote: 9-0
Majority: Taft, joined by Holmes, Van Devanter, McReynolds, Brandeis, Sutherland, Butler, Sanford, and Stone

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE TAFT delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is an original petition in this Court for a writ of habeas corpus by Philip Grossman against Ritchie V. Graham, Superintendent of the Chicago House of Correction, Cook County, Illinois. The respondent has answered the rule to show cause. The facts are not in dispute.

On November 24, 1920, the United States filed a bill in equity against Philip … averring that Grossman was maintaining a nuisance at his place of business in Chicago by sales of liquor in violation of the Act and asking an injunction to abate the same. Two days later, the District Judge granted a temporary order. January 11, 1921, an information was filed against Grossman, charging that, after the restraining order had been served on him, he had sold to several persons liquor to be drunk on his premises. He was arrested, tried, found guilty of contempt and sentenced to imprisonment in the Chicago House of Correction for one year and to pay a fine of $1,000 to the United States and costs … In December, 1923, the President issued a pardon in which he commuted the sentence of Grossman to the fine of $1,000 on condition that the fine be paid. The pardon was accepted, the fine was paid, and the defendant was released. In May, 1924, however, the District Court committed Grossman to the Chicago House of Correction to serve the sentence notwithstanding the pardon. … The only question raised by the pleadings herein is that of the power of the President to grant the pardon.

The argument for the respondent is that the President’s power extends only to offenses against the United States, and a contempt of Court is not such an offense, that offenses against the United States are not common law offenses, but can only be created by legislative act, that the President’s pardoning power is more limited than that of the King of England at common law … that the context of the Constitution shows that the word “offences” is used in that instrument only to include crimes and misdemeanors triable by jury, and not contempts of the dignity and authority of the federal courts, and that to construe the pardon clause to include contempts of court would be to violate the fundamental principle of the Constitution in the division of powers between the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches, and to take from the federal courts their independence and the essential means of protecting their dignity and authority.

The language of the Constitution cannot be interpreted safely except by reference to the common law and to British institutions as they were when the instrument was framed and adopted. The statesmen and lawyers of the Convention who submitted it to the ratification of the Conventions of the thirteen States were born and brought up in the atmosphere of the common law, and thought and spoke in its vocabulary. They were familiar with other forms of government, recent and ancient, and indicated in their discussions earnest study and consideration of many of them, but when they came to put their conclusions into the form of fundamental law in a compact draft, they expressed them in terms of the common law, confident that they could be shortly and easily understood …

The King of England, before our Revolution, in the exercise of his prerogative, had always exercised the power to pardon contempts of court, just as he did ordinary crime and misdemeanors and as he has done to the present day …

[L]ong before our Constitution, a distinction had been recognized at common law between the effect of the King’s pardon to wipe out the effect of a sentence for contempt insofar as it had been imposed to punish the contemnor for violating the dignity of the court and the King, in the public interest, and its inefficacy to halt or interfere with the remedial part of the court’s order necessary to secure the rights of the injured suitor … The same distinction, nowadays referred to as the difference between civil and criminal contempts, is still maintained in English law …

In our own law, the same distinction clearly appears … [I]t is not the fact of punishment, but rather its character and purpose, that makes the difference between the two kinds of contempts. For civil contempts, the punishment is remedial and for the benefit of the complainant, and a pardon cannot stop it. For criminal contempts, the sentence is punitive in the public interest to vindicate the authority of the court and to deter other like derelictions.

With this authoritative background of the common law and English history before the American Revolution to show that criminal contempts were within the understood scope of the pardoning power of the Executive, we come now to the history of the clause in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 … The Committee on Style reported this clause as it now is: “and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States except in cases of impeachment … ”

We have given the history of the clause to show that the words “for offences against the United States” were inserted by a Committee on Style, presumably to make clear that the pardon of the President was to operate upon offenses against the United States, as distinguished from offenses against the States. It cannot be supposed that the Committee on Revision, by adding these words, or the Convention, by accepting them, intended sub silentio to narrow the scope of a pardon from one at common law, or to confer any different power in this regard on our Executive from that which the members of the Convention had seen exercised before the Revolution …

Nothing in the ordinary meaning of the words “offences against the United States” excludes criminal contempts. That which violates the dignity and authority of federal courts such as an intentional effort to defeat their decrees justifying punishment violates a law of the United States … and so must be an offense against the United States. Moreover, this Court has held that the general statute of limitation, which forbids prosecutions “for any offense unless instituted within three years next after such offense shall have been committed,” applies to criminal contempts …

Finally, it is urged that criminal contempts should not be held within the pardoning power because it will tend to destroy the independence of the judiciary and violate the primary constitutional principle of a separation of the legislative, executive and judicial powers …

The Federal Constitution nowhere expressly declares that the three branches of the Government shall be kept separate and independent. [I]ndependence and separation between the three branches … are not attained, or intended, as other provisions of the Constitution and the normal operation of government under it easily demonstrate. By affirmative action through the veto power, the Executive and one more than one-third of either House may defeat all legislation. One-half of the House and two-thirds of the Senate may impeach and remove the members of the Judiciary. The Executive can reprieve or pardon all offenses after their commission, either before trial, during trial or after trial, by individuals, or by classes, conditionally or absolutely, and this without modification or regulation by Congress. Ex parte Garland, (1866). Negatively, one House of Congress can withhold all appropriations and stop the operations of Government. The Senate can hold up all appointments, confirmation of which either the Constitution or a statute requires, and thus deprive the President of the necessary agents with which he is to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

These are some instances of positive and negative restraints possibly available under the Constitution to each branch of the government in defeat of the action of the other. They show that the independence of each of the others is qualified, and is so subject to exception as not to constitute a broadly positive injunction or a necessarily controlling rule of construction …

If it be said that the President, by successive pardons of constantly recurring contempts in particular litigation, might deprive a court of power to enforce its orders in a recalcitrant neighborhood, it is enough to observe that such a course is so improbable as to furnish but little basis for argument. Exceptional cases like this, if to be imagined at all, would suggest a resort to impeachment, rather than to a narrow and strained construction of the general powers of the President. The power of a court to protect itself and its usefulness by punishing contemnors is, of course, necessary, but it is one exercised without the restraining influence of a jury and without many of the guaranties which the bill of rights offers to protect the individual against unjust conviction. Is it unreasonable to provide for the possibility that the personal element may sometimes enter into a summary judgment pronounced by a judge who thinks his authority is flouted or denied? May it not be fairly said that, in order to avoid possible mistake, undue prejudice or needless severity, the chance of pardon should exist at least as much in favor of a person convicted by a judge without a jury as in favor of one convicted in a jury trial? The pardoning by the President of criminal contempts has been practiced more than three-quarters of a century, and no abuses during all that time developed sufficiently to invoke a test in the federal courts of its validity.

It goes without saying that nowhere is there a more earnest will to maintain the independence of federal courts and the preservation of every legitimate safeguard of their effectiveness afforded by the Constitution than in this Court. But the qualified independence which they fortunately enjoy is not likely to be permanently strengthened by ignoring precedent and practice and minimizing the importance of the coordinating checks and balances of the Constitution.

The rule is made absolute, and the petitioner is discharged.

[Reversed.]

Excerpted by Alexandria Metzdorf

Korematsu v. United States (1944)

323 U.S. 214 (1944)

Decision: Affirmed
Vote: 6-3
Majority: Black, joined by Stone, Reed, Frankfurter, Douglas, and Rutledge
Concurrence: Frankfurter
Dissent: Roberts
Dissent: Murphy
Dissent: Jackson

Mr. Justice BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.

The petitioner, an American citizen of Japanese descent, was convicted in a federal district court for remaining in San Leandro, California, a ‘Military Area’, contrary to Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 of the Commanding General of the Western Command, U.S. Army, which directed that after May 9, 1942, all persons of Japanese ancestry should be excluded from that area. No question was raised as to petitioner’s loyalty to the United States. The Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed … and the importance of the constitutional question involved caused us to grant certiorari.

It should be noted, to begin with, that all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect. That is not to say that all such restrictions are unconstitutional. It is to say that courts must subject them to the most rigid scrutiny. Pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; racial antagonism never can.

In the instant case prosecution of the petitioner was begun by information charging violation of an Act of Congress, of March 21, 1942 … which provides that

‘whoever shall enter, remain in, leave, or commit any act in any military area or military zone prescribed, under the authority of an Executive order of the President, by the Secretary of War, or by any military commander designated by the Secretary of War, contrary to the restrictions applicable to any such area or zone or contrary to the order of the Secretary of War or any such military commander, shall, if it appears that he knew or should have known of the existence and extent of the restrictions or order and that his act was in violation thereof, be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be liable to a fine of not to exceed $5,000 or to imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, for each offense.’

Exclusion Order No. 34, which the petitioner knowingly and admittedly violated was one of a number of military orders and proclamations, all of which were substantially based upon Executive Order No. 9066. That order, issued after we were at war with Japan, declared that

‘the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities.’

One of the series of orders and proclamations, a curfew order, which like the exclusion order here was promulgated pursuant to Executive Order 9066, subjected all persons of Japanese ancestry in prescribed West Coast military areas to remain in their residences from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. As is the case with the exclusion order here, that prior curfew order was designed as a ‘protection against espionage and against sabotage.’ In Kiyoshi Hirabayashi v. United States, we sustained a conviction obtained for violation of the curfew order. The Hirabayashi conviction and this one thus rest on the same 1942 Congressional Act and the same basic executive and military orders, all of which orders were aimed at the twin dangers of espionage and sabotage.

The 1942 Act was attacked in the Hirabayashi case as … a constitutionally prohibited discrimination solely on account of race. To these questions, we gave the serious consideration which their importance justified. We upheld the curfew order as an exercise of the power of the government to take steps necessary to prevent espionage and sabotage in an area threatened by Japanese attack.

In the light of the principles we announced in the Hirabayashi case, we are unable to conclude that it was beyond the war power of Congress and the Executive to exclude those of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast war area at the time they did. True, exclusion from the area in which one’s home is located is a far greater deprivation than constant confinement to the home from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. Nothing short of apprehension by the proper military authorities of the gravest imminent danger to the public safety can constitutionally justify either. But exclusion from a threatened area, no less than curfew, has a definite and close relationship to the prevention of espionage and sabotage. The military authorities, charged with the primary responsibility of defending our shores, concluded that curfew provided inadequate protection and ordered exclusion. They did so, as pointed out in our Hirabayashi opinion, in accordance with Congressional authority to the military to say who should, and who should not, remain in the threatened areas.

In this case the petitioner challenges the assumptions upon which we rested our conclusions in the Hirabayashi case. He also urges that by May 1942, when Order No. 34 was promulgated, all danger of Japanese invasion of the West Coast had disappeared. After careful consideration of these contentions we are compelled to reject them.

Here, as in the Hirabayashi case,

‘we cannot reject as unfounded the judgment of the military authorities and of Congress that there were disloyal members of that population, whose number and strength could not be precisely and quickly ascertained. We cannot say that the war-making branches of the Government did not have ground for believing that in a critical hour such persons could not readily be isolated and separately dealt with, and constituted a menace to the national defense and safety, which demanded that prompt and adequate measures be taken to guard against it.’

Like curfew, exclusion of those of Japanese origin was deemed necessary because of the presence of an unascertained number of disloyal members of the group, most of whom we have no doubt were loyal to this country … The judgment that exclusion of the whole group was for the same reason a military imperative answers the contention that the exclusion was in the nature of group punishment based on antagonism to those of Japanese origin. That there were members of the group who retained loyalties to Japan has been confirmed by investigations made subsequent to the exclusion. Approximately five thousand American citizens of Japanese ancestry refused to swear unqualified allegiance to the United States and to renounce allegiance to the Japanese Emperor, and several thousand evacuees requested repatriation to Japan …

We uphold the exclusion order as of the time it was made and when the petitioner violated it … In doing so, we are not unmindful of the hardships imposed by it upon a large group of American citizens … But hardships are part of war, and war is an aggregation of hardships. All citizens alike, both in and out of uniform, feel the impact of war in greater or lesser measure. Citizenship has its responsibilities as well as its privileges, and in time of war the burden is always heavier. Compulsory exclusion of large groups of citizens from their homes, except under circumstances of direst emergency and peril, is inconsistent with our basic governmental institutions. But when under conditions of modern warfare our shores are threatened by hostile forces, the power to protect must be commensurate with the threatened danger.

…

It is sufficient here for us to pass upon the order which petitioner violated. To do more would be to go beyond the issues raised, and to decide momentous questions not contained within the framework of the pleadings or the evidence in this case. It will be time enough to decide the serious constitutional issues which petitioner seeks to raise when an assembly or relocation order is applied or is certain to be applied to him, and we have its terms before us …

It is said that we are dealing here with the case of imprisonment of a citizen in a concentration camp solely because of his ancestry, without evidence or inquiry concerning his loyalty and good disposition towards the United States. Our task would be simple, our duty clear, were this a case involving the imprisonment of a loyal citizen in a concentration camp because of racial prejudice. Regardless of the true nature of the assembly and relocation centers—and we deem it unjustifiable to call them concentration camps with all the ugly connotations that term implies—we are dealing specifically with nothing but an exclusion order. To cast this case into outlines of racial prejudice, without reference to the real military dangers which were presented, merely confuses the issue. Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or his race. He was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire, because the properly constituted military authorities feared an invasion of our West Coast and felt constrained to take proper security measures, because they decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast temporarily, and finally, because Congress, reposing its confidence in this time of war in our military leaders—as inevitably it must—determined that they should have the power to do just this. There was evidence of disloyalty on the part of some, the military authorities considered that the need for action was great, and time was short. We cannot—by availing ourselves of the calm perspective of hindsight—now say that at that time these actions were unjustified.

Affirmed.

Mr. Justice ROBERTS.

I dissent, because I think the indisputable facts exhibit a clear violation of Constitutional rights.

This is not a case of keeping people off the streets at night as was Kiyoshi Hirabayashi v. United States, nor a case of temporary exclusion of a citizen from an area for his own safety or that of the community, nor a case of offering him an opportunity to go temporarily out of an area where his presence might cause danger to himself or to his fellows. On the contrary, it is the case of convicting a citizen as a punishment for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp, based on his ancestry, and solely because of his ancestry, without evidence or inquiry concerning his loyalty and good disposition towards the United States. If this be a correct statement of the facts disclosed by this record, and facts of which we take judicial notice, I need hardly labor the conclusion that Constitutional rights have been violated …

The predicament in which the petitioner thus found himself was this: He was forbidden, by Military Order, to leave the zone in which he lived; he was forbidden, by Military Order, after a date fixed, to be found within that zone unless he were in an Assembly Center located in that zone. General DeWitt’s report to the Secretary of War concerning the programme of evacuation and relocation of Japanese makes it entirely clear, if it were necessary to refer to that document,—and, in the light of the above recitation, I think it is not,—that an Assembly Center was a euphemism for a prison. No person within such a center was permitted to leave except by Military Order.

In the dilemma that he dare not remain in his home, or voluntarily leave the area, without incurring criminal penalties, and that the only way he could avoid punishment was to go to an Assembly Center and submit himself to military imprisonment, the petitioner did nothing.

June 12, 1942, an Information was filed in the District Court for Northern California charging a violation of the Act of March 21, 1942, in that petitioner had knowingly remained within the area covered by Exclusion Order No. 34. A demurrer to the information having been overruled, the petitioner was tried under a plea of not guilty and convicted. Sentence was suspended and he was placed on probation for five years. We know, however, in the light of the foregoing recitation, that he was at once taken into military custody and lodged in an Assembly Center. We further know that, on March 18, 1942, the President had promulgated Executive Order No. 9102 … establishing the War Relocation Authority under which so-called Relocation Centers, a euphemism for concentration camps, were established pursuant to cooperation between the military authorities of the Western Defense Command and the Relocation Authority, and that the petitioner has been confined either in an Assembly Center, within the zone in which he had lived or has been removed to a Relocation Center where, as the facts disclosed in Ex parte Mitsuye Endo, demonstrate, he was illegally held in custody.

The Government has argued this case as if the only order outstanding at the time the petitioner was arrested and informed against was Exclusion Order No. 34 ordering him to leave the area in which he resided, which was the basis of the information against him. That argument has evidently been effective. The opinion refers to the Hirabayashi case, supra, to show that this court has sustained the validity of a curfew order in an emergency. The argument then is that exclusion from a given area of danger, while somewhat more sweeping than a curfew regulation, is of the same nature,—a temporary expedient made necessary by a sudden emergency. This, I think, is a substitution of an hypothetical case for the case [before] the court.  I might agree with the court’s disposition of the hypothetical case … The liberty of every American citizen freely to come and to go must frequently, in the face of sudden danger, be temporarily limited or suspended. The civil authorities must often resort to the expedient of excluding citizens temporarily from a locality. The drawing of fire lines in the case of a conflagration, the removal of persons from the area where a pestilence has broken out, are familiar examples. If the exclusion worked by Exclusion Order No. 34 were of that nature the Hirabayashi case would be authority for sustaining it.

But the facts above recited, and those set forth in Ex parte Metsuye Endo, show that the exclusion was but a part of an over-all plan for forceable detention. This case cannot, therefore, be decided on any such narrow ground as the possible validity of a Temporary Exclusion Order under which the residents of an area are given an opportunity to leave and go elsewhere in their native land outside the boundaries of a military area. To make the case turn on any such assumption is to shut our eyes to reality.

As I have said above, the petitioner, prior to his arrest, was faced with two diametrically contradictory orders given sanction by the Act of Congress of March 21, 1942. The earlier of those orders made him a criminal if he left the zone in which he resided; the later made him a criminal if he did not leave.

I had supposed that if a citizen was constrained by two laws, or two orders having the force of law, and obedience to one would violate the other, to punish him for violation of either would deny him due process of law. And I had supposed that under these circumstances a conviction for violating one of the orders could not stand.

Again it is a new doctrine of constitutional law that one indicted for disobedience to an unconstitutional statute may not defend on the ground of the invalidity of the statute but must obey it though he knows it is no law and, after he has suffered the disgrace of conviction and lost his liberty by sentence, then, and not before, seek, from within prison walls, to test the validity of the law.

Moreover, it is beside the point to rest decision in part on the fact that the petitioner, for his own reasons, wished to remain in his home. If, as is the fact he was constrained so to do, it is indeed a narrow application of constitutional rights to ignore the order which constrained him, in order to sustain his conviction for violation of another contradictory order.

I would reverse the judgment of conviction.

Original excerpt in Lawrence Lessig, Constitutional Law: Separation of Powers, Federalism, and Fourteenth Amendment, published by H2O. Further excerpted by Alexandria Metzdorf. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA.

Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer (1952)

343 U.S. 579 (1952)

Decision: Affirmed
Vote: 6-3
Majority: Black, joined by Frankfurter, Douglas, Jackson, and Burton
Concurrence: Frankfurter
Concurrence: Douglas
Concurrence: Jackson
Concurrence: Burton
Concurrence: Clark
Dissent: Vinson, joined by Reed, and Minton

MR. JUSTICE BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.

We are asked to decide whether the President was acting within his constitutional power when he issued an order directing the Secretary of Commerce to take possession of and operate most of the Nation’s steel mills. The mill owners argue that the President’s order amounts to lawmaking, a legislative function which the Constitution has expressly confided to the Congress and not to the President. The Government’s position is that the order was made on findings of the President that his action was necessary to avert a national catastrophe which would inevitably result from a stoppage of steel production, and that in meeting this grave emergency the President was acting within the aggregate of his constitutional powers as the Nation’s Chief Executive and the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. The issue emerges here from the following series of events:

In the latter part of 1951, a dispute arose between the steel companies and their employees over terms and conditions that should be included in new collective bargaining agreements … On April 4, 1952, the Union gave notice of a nation-wide strike called to begin at 12:01 a.m. April 9. The indispensability of steel as a component of substantially all weapons and other war materials led the President to believe that the proposed work stoppage would immediately jeopardize our national defense and that governmental seizure of the steel mills was necessary in order to assure the continued availability of steel. Reciting these considerations for his action, the President, a few hours before the strike was to begin, issued Executive Order 10340 … The order directed the Secretary of Commerce to take possession of most of the steel mills and keep them running. The Secretary immediately issued his own possessory orders, calling upon the presidents of the various seized companies to serve as operating managers for the United States. They were directed to carry on their activities in accordance with regulations and directions of the Secretary. The next morning the President sent a message to Congress reporting his action … Twelve days later he sent a second message … Congress has taken no action.

Obeying the Secretary’s orders under protest, the companies brought proceedings against him in the District Court. Their complaints charged that the seizure was not authorized by an act of Congress or by any constitutional provisions …

Two crucial issues have developed: First. Should final determination of the constitutional validity of the President’s order be made in this case which has proceeded no further than the preliminary injunction stage? Second. If so, is the seizure order within the constitutional power of the President?

The President’s power, if any, to issue the order must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself. There is no statute that expressly authorizes the President to take possession of property as he did here. Nor is there any act of Congress to which our attention has been directed from which such a power can fairly be implied. Indeed, we do not understand the Government to rely on statutory authorization for this seizure. There are two statutes which do authorize the President to take both personal and real property under certain conditions … However, the Government admits that these conditions were not met and that the President’s order was not rooted in either of the statutes. The Government refers to the seizure provisions of one of these statutes … as “much too cumbersome, involved, and time-consuming for the crisis which was at hand.”

Moreover, the use of the seizure technique to solve labor disputes in order to prevent work stoppages was not only unauthorized by any congressional enactment; prior to this controversy, Congress had refused to adopt that method of settling labor disputes. When the Taft-Hartley Act was under consideration in 1947, Congress rejected an amendment which would have authorized such governmental seizures in cases of emergency … Apparently it was thought that the technique of seizure, like that of compulsory arbitration, would interfere with the process of collective bargaining … Consequently, the plan Congress adopted in that Act did not provide for seizure under any circumstances …

It is clear that if the President had authority to issue the order he did, it must be found in some provision of the Constitution. And it is not claimed that express constitutional language grants this power to the President. The contention is that presidential power should be implied from the aggregate of his powers under the Constitution. Particular reliance is placed on provisions in Article II which say that “The executive Power shall be vested in a President … “; that “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”; and that he “shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.”

The order cannot properly be sustained as an exercise of the President’s military power as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. The Government attempts to do so by citing a number of cases upholding broad powers in military commanders engaged in day-to-day fighting in a theater of war. Such cases need not concern us here. Even though “theater of war” be an expanding concept, we cannot with faithfulness to our constitutional system hold that the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces has the ultimate power as such to take possession of private property in order to keep labor disputes from stopping production. This is a job for the Nation’s lawmakers, not for its military authorities.

Nor can the seizure order be sustained because of the several constitutional provisions that grant executive power to the President. In the framework of our Constitution, the President’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker. The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad. And the Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to execute. The first section of the first article says that “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States … ” After granting many powers to the Congress, Article I goes on to provide that Congress may “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

The President’s order does not direct that a congressional policy be executed in a manner prescribed by Congress —it directs that a presidential policy be executed in a manner prescribed by the President. The preamble of the order itself, like that of many statutes, sets out reasons why the President believes certain policies should be adopted, proclaims these policies as rules of conduct to be followed, and again, like a statute, authorizes a government official to promulgate additional rules and regulations consistent with the policy proclaimed and needed to carry that policy into execution. The power of Congress to adopt such public policies as those proclaimed by the order is beyond question … The Constitution does not subject this lawmaking power of Congress to presidential or military supervision or control.

It is said that other Presidents without congressional authority have taken possession of private business enterprises in order to settle labor disputes. But even if this be true, Congress has not thereby lost its exclusive constitutional authority to make laws necessary and proper to carry out the powers vested by the Constitution “in the Government of the United States, or any Department or Officer thereof.”

The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times. It would do no good to recall the historical events, the fears of power and the hopes for freedom that lay behind their choice. Such a review would but confirm our holding that this seizure order cannot stand.

The judgment of the District Court is

Affirmed.

Justice Jackson, concurring in the judgment and opinion of the Court.

That comprehensive and undefined presidential powers hold both practical advantages and grave dangers for the country will impress anyone who has served as legal adviser to a President in time of transition and public anxiety … The opinions of judges, no less than executives and publicists, often suffer the infirmity of confusing the issue of a power’s validity with the cause it is invoked to promote, of confounding the permanent executive office with its temporary occupant. The tendency is strong to emphasize transient results upon policies—such as wages or stabilization —and lose sight of enduring consequences upon the balanced power structure of our Republic …

The actual art of governing under our Constitution does not and cannot conform to judicial definitions of the power of any of its branches based on isolated clauses or even single Articles torn from context. While the Constitution diffuses power the better to secure liberty, it also contemplates that practice will integrate the dispersed powers into a workable government. It enjoins upon its branches separateness but interdependence, autonomy but reciprocity. Presidential powers are not fixed but fluctuate, depending upon their disjunction or conjunction with those of Congress. We may well begin by a somewhat over-simplified grouping of practical situations in which a President may doubt, or others may challenge, his powers, and by distinguishing roughly the legal consequences of this factor of relativity.

1. When the President acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate … In these circumstances, and in these only, may he be said (for what it may be worth) to personify the federal sovereignty. If his act is held unconstitutional under these circumstances, it usually means that the Federal Government as an undivided whole lacks power. A seizure executed by the President pursuant to an Act of Congress would be supported by the strongest of presumptions and the widest latitude of judicial interpretation, and the burden of persuasion would rest heavily upon any who might attack it.
2. When the President acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain. Therefore, congressional inertia, indifference or quiescence may sometimes, at least as a practical matter, enable, if not invite, measures on independent presidential responsibility. In this area, any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than on abstract theories of law.
3. When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter. Courts can sustain exclusive presidential control in such a case only by disabling the Congress from acting upon the subject. Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system.

Into which of these classifications does this executive seizure of the steel industry fit? It is eliminated from the first by admission, for it is conceded that no congressional authorization exists for this seizure. That takes away also the support of the many precedents and declarations which were made in relation, and must be confined, to this category …

Can it then be defended under flexible tests available to the second category? It seems clearly eliminated from that class because Congress has not left seizure of private property an open field but has covered it by three statutory policies inconsistent with this seizure. In cases where the purpose is to supply needs of the Government itself, two courses are provided: one, seizure of a plant which fails to comply with obligatory orders placed by the Government … another, condemnation of facilities, including temporary use under the power of eminent domain … The third is applicable where it is the general economy of the country that is to be protected rather than exclusive governmental interests … None of these were invoked. In choosing a different and inconsistent way of his own, the President cannot claim that it is necessitated or invited by failure of Congress to legislate upon the occasions, grounds and methods for seizure of industrial properties.

This leaves the current seizure to be justified only by the severe tests under the third grouping, where it can be supported only by any remainder of executive power after subtraction of such powers as Congress may have over the subject. In short, we can sustain the President only by holding that seizure of such strike-bound industries is within his domain and beyond control by Congress. Thus, this Court’s first review of such seizures occurs under circumstances which leave presidential power most vulnerable to attack and in the least favorable of possible constitutional postures.

I did not suppose, and I am not persuaded, that history leaves it open to question, at least in the courts, that the executive branch, like the Federal Government as a whole, possesses only delegated powers. The purpose of the Constitution was not only to grant power, but to keep it from getting out of hand. However, because the President does not enjoy unmentioned powers does not mean that the mentioned ones should be narrowed by a niggardly construction. Some clauses could be made almost unworkable, as well as immutable, by refusal to indulge some latitude of interpretation for changing times. I have heretofore, and do now, give to the enumerated powers the scope and elasticity afforded by what seem to be reasonable, practical implications instead of the rigidity dictated by a doctrinaire textualism.

The Solicitor General seeks the power of seizure in three clauses of the Executive Article, the first reading, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Lest I be thought to exaggerate, I quote the interpretation which his brief puts upon it: “In our view, this clause constitutes a grant of all the executive powers of which the Government is capable.” If that be true, it is difficult to see why the forefathers bothered to add several specific items, including some trifling ones.

The example of such unlimited executive power that must have most impressed the forefathers was the prerogative exercised by George III, and the description of its evils in the Declaration of Independence leads me to doubt that they were creating their new Executive in his image …

The clause on which the Government next relies is that “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States … ” It undoubtedly puts the Nation’s armed forces under presidential command. Hence, this loose appellation is sometimes advanced as support for any presidential action, internal or external, involving use of force, the idea being that it vests power to do anything, anywhere, that can be done with an army or navy.

That seems to be the logic of an argument tendered at our bar—that the President having, on his own responsibility, sent American troops abroad derives from that act “affirmative power” to seize the means of producing a supply of steel for them. To quote, “Perhaps the most forceful illustration of the scope of Presidential power in this connection is the fact that American troops in Korea, whose safety and effectiveness are so directly involved here, were sent to the field by an exercise of the President’s constitutional powers.” Thus, it is said, he has invested himself with “war powers.”

I cannot foresee all that it might entail if the Court should indorse this argument. Nothing in our Constitution is plainer than that declaration of a war is entrusted only to Congress. Of course, a state of war may in fact exist without a formal declaration. But no doctrine that the Court could promulgate would seem to me more sinister and alarming than that a President whose conduct of foreign affairs is so largely uncontrolled, and often even is unknown, can vastly enlarge his mastery over the internal affairs of the country by his own commitment of the Nation’s armed forces to some foreign venture … I do not, however, find it necessary or appropriate to consider the legal status of the Korean enterprise to discountenance argument based on it.

Assuming that we are in a war de facto, whether it is or is not a war de jure, does that empower the Commander in Chief to seize industries he thinks necessary to supply our army? The Constitution expressly places in Congress power “to raise and support Armies” and “to provide and maintain a Navy.” This certainly lays upon Congress primary responsibility for supplying the armed forces …

There are indications that the Constitution did not contemplate that the title Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy will constitute him also Commander in Chief of the country, its industries and its inhabitants. He has no monopoly of “war powers,” whatever they are. While Congress cannot deprive the President of the command of the army and navy, only Congress can provide him an army or navy to command. It is also empowered to make rules for the “Government and Regulation of land and naval Forces,” by which it may to some unknown extent impinge upon even command functions.

That military powers of the Commander in Chief were not to supersede representative government of internal affairs seems obvious from the Constitution and from elementary American history. Time out of mind, and even now in many parts of the world, a military commander can seize private housing to shelter his troops. Not so, however, in the United States, for the Third Amendment says, “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” Thus, even in war time, his seizure of needed military housing must be authorized by Congress. It also was expressly left to Congress to “provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions. … ” Such a limitation on the command power, written at a time when the militia rather than a standing army was contemplated as the military weapon of the Republic, underscores the Constitution’s policy that Congress, not the Executive, should control utilization of the war power as an instrument of domestic policy. Congress, fulfilling that function, has authorized the President to use the army to enforce certain civil rights …

While broad claims under this rubric often have been made, advice to the President in specific matters usually has carried overtones that powers, even under this head, are measured by the command functions usual to the topmost officer of the army and navy. Even then, heed has been taken of any efforts of Congress to negative his authority …

The Solicitor General … grounds support of the seizure upon nebulous, inherent powers never expressly granted but said to have accrued to the office from the customs and claims of preceding administrations. The plea is for a resulting power to deal with a crisis or an emergency according to the necessities of the case, the unarticulated assumption being that necessity knows no law.

Loose and irresponsible use of adjectives colors all nonlegal and much legal discussion of presidential powers. “Inherent” powers, “implied” powers, “incidental” powers, “plenary” powers, “war” powers and “emergency” powers are used, often interchangeably and without fixed or ascertainable meanings.

The vagueness and generality of the clauses that set forth presidential powers afford a plausible basis for pressures within and without an administration for presidential action beyond that supported by those whose responsibility it is to defend his actions in court. The claim of inherent and unrestricted presidential powers has long been a persuasive dialectical weapon in political controversy …

The appeal, however, that we declare the existence of inherent powers ex necessitate to meet an emergency asks us to do what many think would be wise, although it is something the forefathers omitted. They knew what emergencies were, knew the pressures they engender for authoritative action, knew, too, how they afford a ready pretext for usurpation. We may also suspect that they suspected that emergency powers would tend to kindle emergencies. Aside from suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in time of rebellion or invasion, when the public safety may require it … they made no express provision for exercise of extraordinary authority because of a crisis … I do not think we rightfully may so amend their work, and, if we could, I am not convinced it would be wise to do so …

In view of the ease, expedition and safety with which Congress can grant and has granted large emergency powers, certainly ample to embrace this crisis, I am quite unimpressed with the argument that we should affirm possession of them without statute. Such power either has no beginning or it has no end. If it exists, it need submit to no legal restraint. I am not alarmed that it would plunge us straightway into dictatorship, but it is at least a step in that wrong direction.

As to whether there is imperative necessity for such powers, it is relevant to note the gap that exists between the President’s paper powers and his real powers. The Constitution does not disclose the measure of the actual controls wielded by the modern presidential office. That instrument must be understood as an Eighteenth-Century sketch of a government hoped for, not as a blueprint of the Government that is. Vast accretions of federal power, eroded from that reserved by the States, have magnified the scope of presidential activity. Subtle shifts take place in the centers of real power that do not show on the face of the Constitution.

Executive power has the advantage of concentration in a single head in whose choice the whole Nation has a part, making him the focus of public hopes and expectations. In drama, magnitude and finality his decisions so far overshadow any others that almost alone he fills the public eye and ear. No other personality in public life can begin to compete with him in access to the public mind through modern methods of communications. By his prestige as head of state and his influence upon public opinion he exerts a leverage upon those who are supposed to check and balance his power which often cancels their effectiveness …

… I cannot be brought to believe that this country will suffer if the Court refuses further to aggrandize the presidential office, already so potent and so relatively immune from judicial review … at the expense of Congress …

The essence of our free Government is “leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the law”—to be governed by those impersonal forces which we call law. Our Government is fashioned to fulfill this concept so far as humanly possible. The Executive, except for recommendation and veto, has no legislative power. The executive action we have here originates in the individual will of the President and represents an exercise of authority without law. No one, perhaps not even the President, knows the limits of the power he may seek to exert in this instance and the parties affected cannot learn the limit of their rights. We do not know today what powers over labor or property would be claimed to flow from Government possession if we should legalize it, what rights to compensation would be claimed or recognized, or on what contingency it would end. With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations.

Such institutions may be destined to pass away. But it is the duty of the Court to be last, not first, to give them up …

Original excerpt in Lawrence Lessig, Constitutional Law: Separation of Powers, Federalism, and Fourteenth Amendment, published by H2O. Further excerpted by Alexandria Metzdorf. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA.

Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority v. Citizens for the Abatement of Aircraft Noise, Inc. (1991)

501 U.S. 252 (1991)

Decision: Reversed
Vote: 6-3
Majority: Stevens, joined by Blackmun, O’Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Souter
Dissent: White, joined by Rehnquist, and Marshall/p>

JUSTICE STEVENS delivered the opinion of the Court.

An Act of Congress authorizing the transfer of operating control of two major airports from the Federal Government to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) conditioned the transfer on the creation by MWAA of a unique “Board of Review” composed of nine Members of Congress and vested with veto power over decisions made by MWAA’s Board of Directors … The principal question presented is whether this unusual statutory condition violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers … We conclude, as did the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, that the condition is unconstitutional.

In 1940, Congress authorized the Executive Branch to acquire a tract of land a few miles from the Capitol and to construct what is now Washington National Airport (National). From the time it opened until 1987, National was owned and operated by the Federal Government …

Despite the FAA’s history of profitable operation of National and excellent management of both airports, the Secretary of Transportation concluded that necessary capital improvements could not be financed for either National or Dulles unless control of the airports was transferred to a regional authority with power to raise money by selling tax-exempt bonds … In 1984, she therefore appointed an advisory commission to develop a plan for the creation of such a regional authority.

The Commission recommended that the proposed authority be created by a congressionally approved compact between Virginia and the District … [a] Board of Review “shall consist” of nine Members of the Congress, eight of whom serve on committees with jurisdiction over transportation issues and none of whom may be a Member from Maryland, Virginia, or the District of Columbia … Subparagraph (4)(B) details the actions that must be submitted to the Board of Review for approval, which include adoption of a budget … and appointment of the chief executive officer of the Authority … Subparagraph (4)(D) explains that disapproval by the Board will prevent submitted actions from taking effect … Other significant provisions of the Act include subparagraph (5), which authorizes the Board of Review to require Authority directors to consider any action relating to the airports … subsection (g), which requires that any action changing the hours of operation at either National or Dulles be taken by regulation and therefore be subject to veto by the Board of Review … and subsection (h), which contains a provision disabling MWAA’s Board of Directors from performing any action subject to the veto power if a court should hold that the Board of Review provisions of the Act are invalid …

Petitioners argue that this case does not raise any separation-of-powers issue because the Board of Review neither exercises federal power nor acts as an agent of Congress. Examining the origin and structure of the Board, we conclude that petitioners are incorrect.

Petitioners lay great stress on the fact that the Board of Review was established by the bylaws of MWAA, which was created by legislation enacted by the Commonwealth of Virginia and the District of Columbia … [W]e believe the fact that the Board of Review was created by state enactments is not enough to immunize it from separation-of-powers review. Several factors combine to mandate this result.

Control over National and Dulles was originally in federal hands, and was transferred to MWAA only subject to the condition that the States create the Board of Review. Congress placed such significance on the Board that it required that the Board’s invalidation prevent MWAA from taking any action that would have been subject to Board oversight … Moreover, the Federal Government has a strong and continuing interest in the efficient operation of the airports, which are vital to the smooth conduct of Government business, especially to the work of Congress, whose Members must maintain offices in both Washington and the districts that they represent and must shuttle back and forth according to the dictates of busy and often unpredictable schedules. This federal interest was identified in the preamble to the Transfer Act … justified a Presidential appointee on the Board of Directors, and motivated the creation of the Board of Review, the structure and the powers of which Congress mandated in detail … Most significant, membership on the Board of Review is limited to federal officials, specifically members of congressional committees charged with authority over air transportation.

That the Members of Congress who serve on the Board nominally serve “in their individual capacities, as representatives of users” of the airports … does not prevent this group of officials from qualifying as a congressional agent exercising federal authority for separation-of-powers purposes. As we recently held, “separation-of-powers analysis does not turn on the labeling of an activity,” Mistretta v. United States, (1989). The Transfer Act imposes no requirement that the Members of Congress who are appointed to the Board actually be users of the airports. Rather, the Act imposes the requirement that the Board members have congressional responsibilities related to the federal regulation of air transportation. These facts belie the ipse dixit that the Board members will act “in their individual capacities.”

Although the legislative history is not necessary to our conclusion that the Board members act in their official congressional capacities, the floor debates in the House confirm our view … [Rep. Smith:] “Under this plan, Congress retains enough control of the airports to deal with any unseen pitfalls resulting from this transfer of authority … We are getting our cake and eating it too … The beauty of the deal is that Congress retains its control without spending a dime … ”

We thus confront an entity created at the initiative of Congress, the powers of which Congress has delineated, the purpose of which is to protect an acknowledged federal interest, and membership in which is restricted to congressional officials. Such an entity necessarily exercises sufficient federal power as an agent of Congress to mandate separation-of-powers scrutiny …

We must therefore consider whether the powers of the Board of Review may, consistent with the separation of powers, be exercised by an agent of Congress.

Because National and Dulles are the property of the Federal Government and their operations directly affect interstate commerce, there is no doubt concerning the ultimate power of Congress to enact legislation defining the policies that govern those operations … The question presented is only whether the Legislature has followed a constitutionally acceptable procedure in delegating decisionmaking authority to the Board of Review …

To forestall the danger of encroachment “beyond the legislative sphere,” the Constitution imposes two basic and related constraints on the Congress. It may not “invest itself or its Members with either executive power or judicial power.” J. W. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States, (1928). And, when it exercises its legislative power, it must follow the “single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered, procedures” specified in Article I …

The first constraint is illustrated by the Court’s holdings in Springer v. Philippine Islands, (1928) … Springer involved the validity of Acts of the Philippine Legislature that authorized a committee of three—two legislators and one executive—to vote corporate stock owned by the Philippine Government. Because the Organic Act of the Philippine Islands incorporated the separation-of-powers principle, and because the challenged statute authorized two legislators to perform the executive function of controlling the management of the government-owned corporations, the Court held the statutes invalid …

The second constraint is illustrated by our decision in Chadha. That case involved the validity of a statute that authorized either House of Congress by resolution to invalidate a decision by the Attorney General to allow a deportable alien to remain in the United States. Congress had the power to achieve that result through legislation, but the statute was nevertheless invalid because Congress cannot exercise its legislative power to enact laws without following the bicameral and presentment procedures specified in Article I.

Respondents rely on both of these constraints in their challenge to the Board of Review … If the power is executive, the Constitution does not permit an agent of Congress to exercise it. If the power is legislative, Congress must exercise it in conformity with the bicameralism and presentment requirements of Art. I, § 7. In short, when Congress “[takes] action that ha[s] the purpose and effect of altering the legal rights, duties, and relations of persons … outside the Legislative Branch,” it must take that action by the procedures authorized in the Constitution …

It is so ordered.

Original excerpt in Lawrence Lessig, Constitutional Law: Separation of Powers, Federalism, and Fourteenth Amendment, published by H2O. Further excerpted by Alexandria Metzdorf. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA.

Clinton v. City of New York (1998)

524 U.S. 417 (1998)

Decision: Affirmed
Vote: 6-3
Majority: Stevens, joined by Rehnquist, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, and Ginsburg
Concurrence: Kennedy
Concur/dissent: Scalia, joined by O’Connor, and Breyer (Part III)
Dissent: Breyer, joined by O’Connor, and Scalia (Part III only)

Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Line Item Veto Act (Act) … was enacted in April 1996 and became effective on January 1, 1997. The following day, six Members of Congress who had voted against the Act brought suit in the District Court for the District of Columbia challenging its constitutionality … We determined, however, that the Members of Congress did not have standing to sue because they had not “alleged a sufficiently concrete injury to have established Article III standing,” Raines v. Byrd, (1997); thus, “[i]n … light of [the] overriding and time-honored concern about keeping the Judiciary’s power within its proper constitutional sphere,” id., at 820, we remanded the case to the District Court with instructions to dismiss the complaint for lack of jurisdiction.

Less than two months after our decision in that case, the President exercised his authority to cancel one provision in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 … Appellees, claiming that they had been injured by two of those cancellations, filed these cases in the District Court. That Court again held the statute invalid, 985 F. Supp. 168, 177182 (1998), and we again expedited our review, 522 U. S. 1144 (1998). We now hold that these appellees have standing to challenge the constitutionality of the Act and, reaching the merits, we agree that the cancellation procedures set forth in the Act violate the Presentment Clause, Art. I, § 7, cl. 2, of the Constitution.

…

Title XIX of the Social Security Act, 79 Stat. 343, as amended, authorizes the Federal Government to transfer huge sums of money to the States to help finance medical care for the indigent. In 1991, Congress directed that those federal subsidies be reduced by the amount of certain taxes levied by the States on health care providers. In 1994, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notified the State of New York that 15 of its taxes were covered by the 1991 Act, and that as of June 30, 1994, the statute therefore required New York to return $955 million to the United States …

New York turned to Congress for relief. On August 5, 1997, Congress enacted a law that resolved the issue in New York’s favor …

On August 11, 1997, the President sent identical notices to the Senate and to the House of Representatives canceling “one item of new direct spending,” specifying § 4722(c) as that item, and stating that he had determined that “this cancellation will reduce the Federal budget deficit … ”

In § 968 of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, Congress amended § 1042 of the Internal Revenue Code to permit owners of certain food refiners and processors to defer the recognition of gain if they sell their stock to eligible farmers’ cooperatives … The purpose of the amendment, as repeatedly explained by its sponsors, was “to facilitate the transfer of refiners and processors to farmers’ cooperatives … ” The amendment to § 1042 was one of the 79 “limited tax benefits” authorized by the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 and specifically identified in Title XVII of that Act as “subject to [the] line item veto.”

On the same date that he canceled the “item of new direct spending” involving New York’s health care programs, the President also canceled this limited tax benefit …

Appellees filed two separate actions against the President and other federal officials challenging these two cancellations. The plaintiffs in the first case are the City of New York, two hospital associations, one hospital, and two unions representing health care employees. The plaintiffs in the second are a farmers’ cooperative consisting of about 30 potato growers in Idaho and an individual farmer who is a member and officer of the cooperative …

As in the prior challenge to the Line Item Veto Act, we initially confront jurisdictional questions.

In both the New York and the Snake River cases, the Government argues that the appellees are not actually injured because the claims are too speculative and, in any event, the claims are advanced by the wrong parties. We find no merit in the suggestion that New York’s injury is merely speculative because HHS has not yet acted on the State’s waiver requests …

The Snake River farmers’ cooperative also suffered an immediate injury when the President canceled the limited tax benefit that Congress had enacted to facilitate the acquisition of processing plants …

Thus, we are satisfied that both of these actions are Article III “Cases” that we have a duty to decide.

The Line Item Veto Act gives the President the power to “cancel in whole” three types of provisions that have been signed into law: “(1) any dollar amount of discretionary budget authority; (2) any item of new direct spending; or (3) any limited tax benefit.” It is undisputed that the New York case involves an “item of new direct spending” and that the Snake River case involves a “limited tax benefit” as those terms are defined in the Act. It is also undisputed that each of those provisions had been signed into law pursuant to Article I, § 7, of the Constitution before it was canceled.

The Act requires the President to adhere to precise procedures whenever he exercises his cancellation authority … It is undisputed that the President meticulously followed these procedures in these cases …

In both legal and practical effect, the President has amended two Acts of Congress by repealing a portion of each. “[R]epeal of statutes, no less than enactment, must conform with Art. I.” INS v. Chadha, (1983) …

There are important differences between the President’s “return” of a bill pursuant to Article I, § 7, and the exercise of the President’s cancellation authority pursuant to the Line Item Veto Act. The constitutional return takes place before the bill becomes law; the statutory cancellation occurs after the bill becomes law. The constitutional return is of the entire bill; the statutory cancellation is of only a part. Although the Constitution expressly authorizes the President to play a role in the process of enacting statutes, it is silent on the subject of unilateral Presidential action that either repeals or amends parts of duly enacted statutes …

The Government advances two related arguments to support its position that despite the unambiguous provisions of the Act, cancellations do not amend or repeal properly enacted statutes in violation of the Presentment Clause. First, relying primarily on Field v. Clark, (1892), the Government contends that the cancellations were merely exercises of discretionary authority granted to the President by the Balanced Budget Act and the Taxpayer Relief Act read in light of the previously enacted Line Item Veto Act. Second, the Government submits that the substance of the authority to cancel tax and spending items “is, in practical effect, no more and no less than the power to `decline to spend’ specified sums of money, or to `decline to implement’ specified tax measures … ” Neither argument is persuasive …

[T]he conclusion in Field v. Clark that the suspensions mandated by the Tariff Act were not exercises of legislative power does not undermine our opinion that cancellations pursuant to the Line Item Veto Act are the functional equivalent of partial repeals of Acts of Congress that fail to satisfy Article I, § 7 …

The cited statutes all relate to foreign trade, and this Court has recognized that in the foreign affairs arena, the President has “a degree of discretion and freedom from statutory restriction which would not be admissible were domestic affairs alone involved.” United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., (1936) … Although Congress presumably anticipated that the President might cancel some of the items in the Balanced Budget Act and in the Taxpayer Relief Act, Congress cannot alter the procedures set out in Article I, § 7, without amending the Constitution …

Neither are we persuaded by the Government’s contention that the President’s authority to cancel new direct spending and tax benefit items is no greater than his traditional authority to decline to spend appropriated funds … It is argued that the Line Item Veto Act merely confers comparable discretionary authority over the expenditure of appropriated funds. The critical difference between this statute and all of its predecessors, however, is that unlike any of them, this Act gives the President the unilateral power to change the text of duly enacted statutes. None of the Act’s predecessors could even arguably have been construed to authorize such a change.

Although they are implicit in what we have already written, the profound importance of these cases makes it appropriate to emphasize three points.

First, we express no opinion about the wisdom of the procedures authorized by the Line Item Veto Act …

Second, although appellees challenge the validity of the Act on alternative grounds, the only issue we address concerns the “finely wrought” procedure commanded by the Constitution …

Third, our decision rests on the narrow ground that the procedures authorized by the Line Item Veto Act are not authorized by the Constitution …

If there is to be a new procedure in which the President will play a different role in determining the final text of what may “become a law,” such change must come not by legislation but through the amendment procedures set forth in Article V of the Constitution. Cf. U. S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, (1995).

The judgment of the District Court is affirmed.

It is so ordered.

Justice Scalia, with whom Justice O’Connor joins, and with whom Justice Breyer joins as to Part III, concurring in part and dissenting in part.

Today the Court acknowledges the” ‘overriding and timehonored concern about keeping the Judiciary’s power within its proper constitutional sphere.'” Ante, at 421, quoting Raines v. Byrd,  (1997). It proceeds, however, to ignore the prescribed statutory limits of our jurisdiction by permitting the expedited-review provisions of the Line Item Veto Act to be invoked by persons who are not “individual[s],” and to ignore the constitutional limits of our jurisdiction by permitting one party to challenge the Government’s denial to another party of favorable tax treatment from which the first party might, but just as likely might not, gain a concrete benefit. In my view, the Snake River appellees lack standing …  the New York appellees have standing …

I agree with the Court that the New York appellees have standing to challenge the President’s cancellation of § 4722(c) of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 as an “item of new direct spending.” … The tax liability they will incur under New York law is a concrete and particularized injury, fairly traceable to the President’s action, and avoided if that action is undone. Unlike the Court, however, I do not believe that Executive cancellation of this item of direct spending violates the Presentment Clause.

The Presentment Clause requires, in relevant part, that “[e]very Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it.” U. S. Const., Art. I, § 7, cl. 2. There is no question that enactment of the Balanced Budget Act complied with these requirements: the House and Senate passed the bill, and the President signed it into law. It was only after the requirements of the Presentment Clause had been satisfied that the President exercised his authority under the Line Item Veto Act to cancel the spending item. Thus, the Court’s problem with the Act is not that it authorizes the President to veto parts of a bill and sign others into law, but rather that it authorizes him to “cancel”-prevent from “having legal force or effect”-certain parts of duly enacted statutes.

…

As much as the Court goes on about Art. I, § 7, therefore, that provision does not demand the result the Court reaches. It no more categorically prohibits the Executive reduction of congressional dispositions in the course of implementing statutes that authorize such reduction, than it categorically prohibits the Executive augmentation of congressional dispositions in the course of implementing statutes that authorize such augmentation-generally known as substantive rulemaking …

I turn, then, to the crux of the matter: whether Congress’s authorizing the President to cancel an item of spending gives him a power that our history and traditions show must reside exclusively in the Legislative Branch. I may note, to begin with, that the Line Item Veto Act is not the first statute to authorize the President to “cancel” spending items. In Bowsher v. Synar,  (1986), we addressed the constitutionality of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, which required the President, if the federal budget deficit exceeded a certain amount, to issue a “sequestration” order mandating spending reductions specified by the Comptroller General, § 902. The effect of sequestration was that “amounts sequestered … shall be permanently cancelled.” § 902(a)(4) (emphasis added). We held that the Act was unconstitutional, not because it impermissibly gave the Executive legislative power, but because it gave the Comptroller General, an officer of the Legislative Branch over whom Congress retained removal power, “the ultimate authority to determine the budget cuts to be made,”  “functions … plainly entailing execution of the law in constitutional terms,”  (emphasis added). The President’s discretion under the Line Item Veto Act is certainly broader than the Comptroller General’s discretion was under the 1985 Act, but it is no broader than the discretion traditionally granted the President in his execution of spending laws.

Insofar as the degree of political, “lawmaking” power conferred upon the Executive is concerned, there is not a dime’s worth of difference between Congress’s authorizing the President to cancel a spending item, and Congress’s authorizing money to be spent on a particular item at the President’s discretion. And the latter has been done since the founding of the Nation …

Certain Presidents have claimed Executive authority to withhold appropriated funds even absent an express conferral of discretion to do so …

The short of the matter is this: Had the Line Item Veto Act authorized the President to “decline to spend” any item of spending contained in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, there is not the slightest doubt that authorization would have been constitutional. What the Line Item Veto Act does instead-authorizing the President to “cancel” an item of spending-is technically different. But the technical difference does not relate to the technicalities of the Presentment Clause, which have been fully complied with; and the doctrine of unconstitutional delegation, which is at issue here, is preeminently not a doctrine of technicalities. The title of the Line Item Veto Act, which was perhaps designed to simplify for public comprehension, or perhaps merely to comply with the terms of a campaign pledge, has succeeded in faking out the Supreme Court. The President’s action it authorizes in fact is not a line-item veto and thus does not offend Art. I, § 7; and insofar as the substance of that action is concerned, it is no different from what Congress has permitted the President to do since the formation of the Union.

I would hold that the President’s cancellation of § 4722(c) of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 as an item of direct spending does not violate the Constitution. Because I find no party before us who has standing to challenge the President’s cancellation of § 968 of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, I do not reach the question whether that violates the Constitution.

For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.

Original excerpt in Lawrence Lessig, Constitutional Law: Separation of Powers, Federalism, and Fourteenth Amendment, published by H2O. Further excerpted by Alexandria Metzdorf. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA.

West Virginia v. EPA (2022)

597 U.S. ___ (2022)

Decision: Reversed and remanded
Vote: 6-3
Majority: Roberts joined by Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett
Concurrence: Gorsuch, joined by Alito
Dissent: Kagan, joined by Breyer and Sotomayor

Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Clean Air Act authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate power plants by setting a “standard of performance” for their emission of certain pollutants into the air … In each case it must reflect the “best system of emission reduction” that the Agency has determined to be “adequately demonstrated” …

In 2015 … EPA issued a new rule [the Clean Power Plan] concluding that the “best system of emission reduction” for existing coal-fired power plants included a requirement that such facilities reduce their own production of electricity, or subsidize increased generation by natural gas, wind, or solar sources …

The question before us is whether this broader conception of EPA’s authority is within the power granted to it by the Clean Air Act. …

… [In 2019,] the Agency replaced the Clean Power Plan … [with] the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule. …

A number of States and private parties immediately filed petitions for review in the D. C. Circuit, challenging EPA’s repeal of the Clean Power Plan and its enactment of the replacement ACE Rule …

The Court of Appeals consolidated all 12 petitions for review into one case. It then held that EPA’s “repeal of the Clean Power Plan rested critically on a mistaken reading of the Clean Air Act”—namely, that generation shifting cannot be a “system of emission reduction” under Section 111. The Court vacated the Agency’s repeal of the Clean Power Plan and remanded to the Agency for further consideration. It also vacated and remanded the replacement rule, the ACE Rule. …

Agencies have only those powers given to them by Congress, and “enabling legislation” is generally not an “open book to which the agency [may] add pages and change the plot line.” E. Gellhorn & P. Verkuil, (1999). We presume that “Congress intends to make major policy decisions itself, not leave those decisions to agencies.” Thus, in certain extraordinary cases, both separation of powers principles and a practical understanding of legislative intent make us “reluctant to read into ambiguous statutory text” the delegation claimed to be lurking there. To convince us otherwise, something more than a merely plausible textual basis for the agency action is necessary. The agency instead must point to “clear congressional authorization” for the power it claims …

… Or, as we put it more recently, we “typically greet” assertions of “extravagant statutory power over the national economy” with “skepticism.” Utility Air. The dissent attempts to fit the analysis in these cases within routine statutory interpretation, but the bottom line—a requirement of “clear  congressional authorization,” ibid.—confirms that the approach under the major questions doctrine is distinct …

The major questions doctrine … refers to an identifiable body of law that has developed over a series of significant cases all addressing a particular and recurring problem: agencies asserting highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted …

Under our precedents, this is a major questions case. In arguing that Section 111(d) empowers it to substantially restructure the American energy market, EPA “claim[ed] to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power” representing a “transformative expansion in [its] regulatory authority.” Utility Air v. EPA (2014) … The Agency’s discovery allowed it to adopt a regulatory program that Congress had conspicuously and repeatedly declined to enact itself … This view of EPA’s authority was not only unprecedented; it also effected a “fundamental revision of the statute, changing it from [one sort of] scheme of … regulation” into an entirely different kind.

There is little reason to think Congress assigned such decisions to the Agency. For one thing, as EPA itself admitted when requesting special funding, “Understand[ing] and project[ing] system-wide … trends in areas such as electricity transmission, distribution, and storage” requires “technical and policy expertise not traditionally needed in EPA regulatory development.” EPA, Fiscal Year 2016 (2015) …

The dissent contends that there is nothing surprising about EPA dictating the optimal mix of energy sources nationwide, since that sort of mandate will reduce air pollution from power plants, which is EPA’s bread and butter … But that does not follow. Forbidding evictions may slow the spread of disease, but the CDC’s ordering such a measure certainly “raise[s] an eyebrow.” We would not expect the Department of Homeland Security to make trade or foreign policy even though doing so could decrease illegal immigration. And no one would consider generation shifting a “tool” in OSHA’s “toolbox,” even though reducing generation at coal plants would reduce workplace illness and injury from coal dust …

Finally, we cannot ignore that the regulatory writ EPA newly uncovered conveniently enabled it to enact a program that, long after the dangers posed by greenhouse gas emissions “had become well known, Congress considered and rejected” multiple times …

The only question … we answer, is … whether the “best system of emission reduction” identified by EPA in the Clean Power Plan was within the authority granted to the Agency in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. For the reasons given, the answer is no. Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible “solution to the crisis of the day.” New York v. United States, (1992). But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme in Section 111(d). A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is reversed, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice Gorsuch, concurring.

To resolve today’s case the Court invokes the major questions doctrine. Under that doctrine’s terms, administrative agencies must be able to point to ‘clear congressional authorization’ when they claim the power to make decisions of vast ‘economic and political significance.’

The major questions doctrine seeks to protect against “unintentional, oblique, or otherwise unlikely” intrusions on these interests. NFIB v. OSHA, (2022) (Gorsuch, J., concurring) When agencies seek to resolve major questions, they at least [must] act with clear congressional authorization and … not “exploit some gap, ambiguity, or doubtful expression in Congress’s statutes to assume responsibilities far beyond” those the people’s representatives actually conferred on them.

Justice Kagan, dissenting.

The Court today issues what is really an advisory opinion on the proper scope of the new rule EPA is considering. That new rule will be subject anyway to immediate, pre-enforcement judicial review. But this Court could not wait—even to see what the new rule says—to constrain EPA’s efforts to address climate change. …

The majority’s decision rests on one claim alone: that generation shifting is just too new and too big a deal for Congress to have authorized it in Section 111’s general terms. But that is wrong. A key reason Congress makes broad delegations like Section 111 is so an agency can respond, appropriately and commensurately, to new and big problems. … That is what Congress did in enacting Section 111. The majority today overrides that legislative choice. In so doing, it deprives EPA of the power needed—and the power granted—to curb the emission of greenhouse gases. …

The majority thinks … that in “certain extraordinary cases”—of which this is one—courts should start off with “skepticism” that a broad delegation authorizes agency action … The majority labels that view the “major questions doctrine,” and claims to find support for it in our case law … But the relevant decisions do normal statutory interpretation: In them, the Court simply insisted that the text of a broad delegation, like any other statute, should be read in context, and with a modicum of common sense. Using that ordinary method, the decisions struck down agency actions (even though they plausibly fit within a delegation’s terms) for two principal reasons. First, an agency was operating far outside its traditional lane, so that it had no viable claim of expertise or experience. And second, the action, if allowed, would have conflicted with, or even wreaked havoc on, Congress’s broader design. In short, the assertion of delegated power was a misfit for both the agency and the statutory scheme. But that is not true here. The Clean Power Plan falls within EPA’s wheelhouse, and it fits perfectly—as I’ve just shown—with all the Clean Air Act’s provisions. …

First, Members of Congress … know they don’t know enough—to regulate sensibly on an issue … they rely, as all of us rely in our daily lives, on people with greater expertise and experience. Those people are found in agencies … Second and relatedly, Members of Congress often can’t know enough—and again, know they can’t—to keep regulatory schemes working across time. Congress usually can’t predict the future—can’t anticipate changing circumstances and the way they will affect varied regulatory techniques. Nor can Congress (realistically) keep track of and respond to fast-flowing developments as they occur. Once again, that is most obviously true when it comes to scientific and technical matters. … Over time, the administrative delegations Congress has made have helped to build a modern Nation … It didn’t happen through legislation alone. It happened because Congress gave broad-ranging powers to administrative agencies, and those agencies then filled in—rule by rule by rule—Congress’s policy outlines. …

In short, when it comes to delegations, there are good reasons for Congress (within extremely broad limits) to get to call the shots. Congress knows about how government works in ways courts don’t … Courts should be modest. Today, the Court is not. Section 111, most naturally read, authorizes EPA to develop the Clean Power Plan … In rewriting that text, the Court substitutes its own ideas about delegations for Congress’s. And that means the Court substitutes its own ideas about policymaking for Congress’s. The Court will not allow the Clean Air Act to work as Congress instructed. The Court, rather than Congress, will decide how much regulation is too much. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is reversed, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Excerpted by Ethan Derstine, Gabriel Thomison, and Eduardo Vidal