Exam 2 Flashcards
(50 cards)
Amendment 16
• Congress has power to tax incomes
Amendment 17
• Direct election of senators
Amendment 18
Prohibition
Lone Wolf v. Louisiana
Congress can abrogate treaties unilaterally to care for and protect Indians
Allgeyer v. Louisiana
(“to be free in the enjoyment of all his faculties. . . to use them in all lawful ways; to live and work where he will; to earn his livelihood by any lawful calling; to pursue any livelihood or avocation, and for that purpose to enter into all contracts which may be proper, necessary and essential to his carrying out to a successful conclusion the purposes above mentioned.”)
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company
(“One of the points made and
discussed at length in the brief of counsel for defendants in error was that ‘corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.’ Before argument, Mr. Chief Justice Waite said: The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.”)
T. Roosevelt on Corporations from 1908 State of the Union Address
(The proposal to make the National
Government supreme over, and therefore to give it complete control over, the railroads and other instruments of interstate commerce is merely a proposal to carry out to the letter one of the prime purposes, if not the prime purpose, for which the Constitution was rounded. It does not represent centralization. It represents merely the acknowledgment of the patent fact that centralization has already come in business. If this irresponsible outside business power is to be controlled in the interest of the general public it can only be controlled in one way–by giving adequate power of control to the one sovereignty capable of exercising such power–the National Government. )
Sherman Antitrust Act
a. Sought to prohibit anti-competitive, monopolistic business practices
b. United States v. E.C. Knight Company
i. Decides to decrease the power of the national government to regulate monopolies
Woodrow Wilson, “The Meaning of Democracy”
• American cannot be a place of unrestricted enterprise
• The question of Woodrow Wilson’s campaign was how to deal with the powerful corporations that had rapidly arisen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and now seemed to dominate the economy
o Proposed to address the problem with active government intervention to recreate the conditions of economic competition; Industrial liberty
• Roosevelt accepted monopolies as inevitable and proposed subjecting them to perpetual government supervision and administration; industrial absolutism
Slaughter-House Cases
a. Louisiana uses police powers to make a corporate slaughterhouse
b. Justice Fields dissents
i. Believes the state legislature isn’t allowed to decide what the police powers are
ii. Wanted to read the 14th amendment broadly
iii. Thinks that we should have national control of business
iv. National uniformity of natural rights that government can implement
v. This violates an inalienable right
1. Substantive Due Process
a. Protects individual business
b. Exists during the Lochner Era
Theodore Roosevelt, “A Charter of Democracy”
• Had been out of the White House for four years, and during that time had become increasingly radical
• Launched himself back into presidential politics with an attack on judges
• Unhappy with his successor President Taft, Roosevelt decided to run again
• Advocated for the recall of judges
o “The recall will have to be adopted or else it will have to be made much easier than it now is to get rid, not merely of a bad judge but of a judge who, however virtuous, has grown so out of touch with social needs and facts that he is unfit longer to render good service on the bench”
• Woodrow Wilson won the election
Taft, “Veto of Arizona Statehood”
• In 1910 popular conventions were held in the territories of Arizona and New Mexico to draft proposed constitutions as part of the process of applying for statehood
• The Arizona Constitution dominated by Democrats, included many of the popular institutional features of the era, including initiative, referendum, and recall provisions
• Constitution was ratified by Arizona voters and forwarded to Congress and the president for their approval and admission for statehood
o President Taft vetoed statehood in 1911 because the recall provision of the Arizona constitution applied to judges as well as other elected officials
• Recall provision was quickly modified and Arizona was admitted to statehood in February 1912
Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company
In 1894 it decled an income tax unconstitutional
Frothingham v. Mellon
• The 1921 federal Maternity Act authorized a cooperative arrangement with the states by which the federal government would provide money and support to those states that joined the federal program to protect the health of mothers and infants
• Massachusetts filed a suit to block the implementation of the statute
• Frothingham argued that the Maternity Act involved the federal government in policies that were within the exclusive province of the states
• Unanimous court decision to dismiss both cases on the grounds that neither the state nor the taxpayer had standing to initiate a federal case
o The court did not have a general commission to correct constitutional errors or adjust the political relationship between the federal government and the states
United States v. E.C. Knight Company
- American Sugar Refining Company held 98% of the United States sugar stock. The “sugar trust” was among the most notorious in the country at the time
- Department of Justice charged that the trust violated the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act by creating a combination in restraint of trade and asked the federal circuit court to void the sale of the E.C. Knight Company
- Circuit Court declined to do so and the government appealed to the Supreme Court
- In an 8-1 ruling, the Court held that Congress could not regulate the production of goods under the commere clause and that the executive could not use the Sherman Act to block the operation of the sugar trust
Champion v. Ames, The Lottery Case
- Many saw lotteries to be a valuable source of revenue, but there was a mobilized opposition that saw them as harmful to the poor, to families and to the public morals
- Anti-gambling activists finally succeeded in winning a federal ban on the interstate traffic of lottery tickets in 1895
- Opened the door to federal regulations on topics that had been the traditional purview of states
- Did the power to “regulate” interstate commerce include the power to prohibit certain items from moving in interstate commerce
- When C.F. Champion was indicted and arrested for attempting to smuggle tickets of the Pan-American Lottery Company, based in Paraguay, from Texas to California in a sealed container to be carried by the Wells-Fargo Express Company, he challenged his detention as unconstitutional
- Court held 5-4 to uphold the statute
Hammer v. Dagenhart
• Prohibition of child labor was an international cause of Progressive reformers at the turn of the 20th century North was particularly concerned about growing competition from the economies of the less developed South, where child labor laws, as with other labor regulations, were often looser.
• Reform campaign turned to the federal government to impose a national uniform standard
• President Wilson helped convince southern senators not to filibuster the measure for the good of the Democratic Party
o In 1916 signed into law the Keating-Owen Act, banning the interstate shipment of goods produced with child labor
o Law was quickly challenged when a N. Carolina father south an injunction so that his two minor sons could continue working in a local cotton mill
• 5-4 Court struck down the statute as inconsistent with the interstate commerce clause
Missouri v. Holland
• By the early 20th century conservationists had tired of wrestling with holdout states that favored hunters, and turned to federal government to trump them
• In 1916 the United States and Great Britain completed a treaty committing each nation to regulating the hunting of birds that migrated between the United States and Canada
o In 1918 on the basis of the treaty Congress passed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act
• Empowered the Secretary of Agriculture to create a national hunting season
• Many states changed their own policies to match the new federal restrictions, but not all cooperated and many hunters flouted the federal laws in the Midwest and the South
• Missouri attorney general Frank McAllister was among those who opposed the federal limitations on hunting. When federal game warden Ray Holland received a tip that McAllister was going with friends on an out-of-season hunt, Holland was eager to make an example.
o Arrested McAllister and fined him
• McAllister filed suit in U.S. district court to prevent Holland from enforcing the federal regulations, which were in conflict with both the state’s own hunting laws and the state’s traditional property rights
• District court upheld federal act
o Concluding that the regulation of migratory birds was not “remote” from the natural subject matter of international treaties and could be seen as benefiting “all the states”
• Supreme Courts opinion upholding the ruling of the district court and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is famous for its broad reading of the federal treaty power as a source of congressional authority in domestic affairs that supplemented the powers enumerated in Article I, Section 8
• Gave congress the and the president to take the actions that they thought were in the national interest, even if those actions trenched on the traditional authority of the states to regulate persons and property within their borders
• Opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. is famous in this case for his bold declaration of the philosophy of living Constitution, an “organism” that could grow beyond the expectations of those who drafted it
Downes v. Bidwell, The Insular Cases
• The acquisition of Hawaii and Puerto Rico triggered an important debate over whether the protections and guarantees of the Constitution applied in these settings
• Did the provisions of the Bill of Rights apply to these territories or was it acceptable to approach these areas as occupied foreign lands, controlled by the United States but not part of the United States?
o Dred Scott and other Antebellum cases made clear that the Constitution did apply to territories
• The court addressed these issues in a series of 35 cases
• Most important cases was Downes v. Bidwell
o 5-4 vote the Court concluded that Congress could impose duties on goods imported from Puerto Rico; however, the justices could not agree on a rationale
• Justice Brown issued a statement announcing the decision of the Court
Munn v. State of Illinois
• In the early 1870s an agrarian political movement known as the Patrons of Husbandry developed in the Midwest in response to the economic power of railroads, corporations, and other property-owners who were in a position to take advantage of farmers
Theodore Roosevelt , An Autobiography
- The most important factor in getting the right spirit in my Administration, next to the insistence upon courage, honesty, and a genuine democracy of desire to serve the plain people, was my insistence upon the theory that the executive power was limited only by specific restrictions and prohibitions appearingin the Constitution or imposed by the Congress under its Constitutional powers
Taft, “Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers”
- all the executive officers appointed by the President directly or indirectly are his subordinates
- 2 principles, limiting Congressional interference with the Executive powers are clear
- Congress may not exercise any of the powers vested in the President
- it may not prevent or obstruct the use of means given him by the Constitution for the exercise of those powers
Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government in the US
Checks and balances must be lodged with leadership and control in order to accomplish particular common goals
The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can.”
ii. Caught up in cult of leadership
J.W. Hampton, Jr. & Co. v. United States
- The Tariff Act of 1922 delegated the authority to set and impose customs duties on articles of imported merchandise. When, under a proclamation of the President, J.W. Hampton & Company was assessed a higher customs duty than was fixed by statute, the company sought relief in the courts.
- Did the Tariff Act’s delegation of commerce power to the Executive Branch violate the Separation of Powers principle?
- In a unanimous decision, the Court held that Congress, within “defined limits,” could vest discretion in Executive officers to make public regulations and direct the details of statutory execution. The Court argued that the same principle that allowed Congress to fix rates in interstate commerce also enabled it to remit to a rate-making body under the control of the Executive branch.
