Exam 2 Flashcards Preview

• 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

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 

• 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.

• Two important themes
o Need for old persistent experimentation by the national government to restore prosperity
o the social and political commitment to providing economic and personal security for all citizens
• Laid out a vision of a new “economic constitutional order” that was as concerned with checking private power and marshaling the power of government to advance the public good as with preventing the abuse of political power
• “As I see it the task of Government in its relation to business is to assist the development of an economic declaration of rights, an economic constitutional order”

• 1st republican elected during New Deal Era
• Created new republicanism that accepted the New Deal
• Believed in the only constitution he saw, the one laid down by the current Supreme Court

• Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard due to the depression
• Several cases made it to the Supreme Court challenging the suspension of the gold clauses
o Government won the cases
o In preparation for a possible loss the President had drafted a speech
• Announcing the President’s higher obligation to “protect the people”
• Does not address the specific action that would have been taken to overrule the court

• Roosevelt believed the Depression created the need for substantial national regulation of the economy
• The Supreme Court declared many of these policies unconstitutional
• The administration decided to take preemptive measures to ensure that policies like the Social Security Act pass
• Proposed the Court-packing plan
• Roosevelt proposed allowing the president to appoint an additional justice for each sitting justice who reached the age of 70, as long as the sitting justice had served at least 10 years
• Max size was set at 15
• Defeated in Congress partly for reasons laid out by the Senate judiciary committee
• Court began to flip and through normal procedures the New Deal was passed 

• Southern representatives in Congress signed the Southern Manifesto which urged resistance to the Supreme Court’s decision ordering desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education
• Manifesto was designed in part to pressure moderates into joining a united front and declaring their support for segregation in the face of the Supreme Court’s decision
• Manifesto lent support to governors, state legislators, school administrators, and judges seeking to delay or obstruct the implementation of desegregation in schools and elsewhere. 

• Eisenhower was convinced that incrementalism and quite diplomacy with moderates in the South would be more effective in achieving desegregation than confrontation
• Emphasized judicial decision on the case was the law of the land, that it be obeyed, and that the president had no choice but to enforce them

In a signed, unanimous per curiam opinion, the Court held that the Arkansas officials were bound by federal court orders that rested on the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The Court noted that its interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment in Brown was the supreme law of the land and that it had a "binding effect" on the states. The Court reaffirmed its commitment to desegregation and reiterated that legislatures are not at liberty to annul judgments of the Court.

Assertion of Judicial Supremacy 

• Tax payers cannot sue the government simply because they pay taxes
• Taxpayers do not suffer distinctive harms as taxpayers when governments spend money unconstitutionally
• Provided an occasion for expanding traditional standing doctrine
• Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 authorized federal officials to provide educational assistance to low-income families
• Believing this practice violated the Establishment Clause of the 1st amendment, protestants and other Americans United for Separation of Church and State along with other public interest groups, sought to construct a lawsuit that would bar such federal expenditures
• 7 families were recruited to serve as plaintiffs. Each maintained they had standing to bring the lawsuit solely because they were federal taxpayers and that their tax revenues were being spent unconstitutionally
• District Court dismissed the suit
• Warren Court proved receptive and allowed the suit in an 8-1 ruling

• Malapportionment was a common problem
• Focused on Tennessee which had no reappointed in half a century despite the law calling for it every ten years
• Baker sought a declaration that the existing state statutes apportioning the legislative districts violated the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment and an injunction blocking the state from holding any future elections under that apportionment scheme
• 6-2 decision, Court struck down the state apportionment law
• Justice Brennan’s majority opinion set out the modern formulation of the political question doctrine, even as it narrowed the scope of that doctrine by accepting the reapportionment cases as appropriate for judicial resolution

• Many liberal believed that the Great Depression required the national government to take a larger role in regulating the economy
• Administration proposed National Industrial Recovery Act that allowed industries to establish wage and hours regulations themselves
• Believed that once an agreement was reached on wages, hours, and other working conditions and then enforced by the national government it would enable NIRA to pass constitutional muster
• Schechter brothers owned slaughterhouses in NYC. Bought chickens from out of state and sold to local stores. Convicted in federal district court of violating the fair competition standards. Conviction confirmed by the appeals court
• Unanimous SC decision ruled that the commerce clause did not allow the national government to determine the wages and hours of local butchers

• First issue on the judicial agenda after the election of 1936 was the Constitutionality of the Wagner Act
• Wagner Act required that businesses recognize unions and pay iimy wages
• Established the National labor Relations Board to monitor and penalize unfair labor practices
• Jones & Laughlin was a corporation based in Penn but it was one of the largest producers of steel
• NLRB had charged Jones & Laughlin with interfering with unionization efforts at its plant in Aliquippa Penn
• Result was a major victory for the Roosevelt administration. Company cases were first to sustain a major New Deal program under the commerce clause

• Showed how far the court was willing to go after 1937 to find a sufficient relationship to interstate commerce when considering the constitutionality of federal regulations of economic activity
• The AAA of 1938 penalized farmers who harvested more than a specified quota of acres for wheat
• Filburn exceeded this quota but did not sell the excess wheat
o Filed an injunction to block Secreatry of Agriculture Claude Wickard from enforcing the AAA and declared the Act unconstitutional
• Divided court ruled in favor of Filburn, a unanimous Supreme Court overturned the ruling saying that his actions could be regulated
• Justice Jackson set down a new doctrinal standard, asking whether an activity considered in the aggregate exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce 

• Although a staunch defender of the New Deal the Wickard case left Jackson uneasy
• Broke down the reasoning for allowing congress to regulate
o 1. Since the economic test is to be applied, the commerce power is no longer a legal question but an economic, and hence, policy one.
o 2. Judicial standards or legal standards for determining the limit of Congressional power are so tenuous and vague that they constitute no protection to the states in any event and that while the pretense of review has some effect in relieving Congress of its own ultimate responsibility, it is a shadow without substance

• Heart of Atlanta was a large motel located near downtown Atlanta. ¾ of the guests were from out of state. The motel did not rent rooms to blacks, given that policy the owners of the motel sought a declaratory judgment that the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional
• Motel argued that Congress had exceeded its authority under the interstate commerce clause in trying to reach a business such as the motel, violated the due process and takings clauses of the 5th amendment by attempting to direct them how to operate their business, and violated the 13th amendment by forcing them against their will to rent their rooms to African-Americans
• Justices forced only the commerce-clause and upheld the law

• Voting Rights Act barred some literacy tests and other registration requirements, and made preclearance from the Justice Department before changing voting rules or electoral procedures mandatory
• South Carolina sought an injunction against the U.S. attorney general preventing the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.
• SC brushed aside South Carolina’s constitutional challenge
• Court made clear that the national legislation could outlaw literacy tests on the basis of its own legislative fact-finding about their use and effects. Established the principle that Congress could supply the facts to show that a state practice was unconstitutional and could act on that conclusion under the Reconstruction Amendments 

• The federal government could place a tax on employment to be paid by employers and employees. Taxpapyers could get up to a 90 percent credit, however, for all taxes they paid to a state unemployment fund, provided that the fund met certain conditions.
• An Alabama steel services company, Steward Machine, paid the federal unemployment tax of $46.14 and then sued an internal revenue official in federal district court to have the payment returned on the grounds that the statute was unconstitutional.
• 5-4 vote sustained this program. Justice Cardozo’s opinion declared that the program was entirely voluntary and, in fact, may have increased state freedom of choice 

• has acquired canonical status as the leading modern expression of contemporary constitutional understandings of executive capacity to act unilaterally
• In December 1951, during the Korean War, the United Steelworkers of America gave notice of their intention to strike when the collective bargaining agreement between the steel mills and their employees expired at the end of that year
• In April 1952 the union called for a strike. President Truman responded with an executive order directing the Secretary of Commerce to take control of the steel mills and keep them operational, arguing that the war effort was at stake.
• Secretary of Commerce took control of the mills

• Source of the “sole organ” doctrine. Declaring that the president was the “sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.”
• 1934 congressional resolution authorizing the president, at his discretion, to prohibit or regulate arms sales to Bolivia and Paraguay, which were engaged in a border war is the issue at hand.
• President Roosevelt immediately issued a proclamation barring the arms sales. The president revoked the order in November 1935. The defendant was indicted in federal district court for violating the arms embargo during the several months that it was in effect.
• SC granted the president broad discretion in foreign affairs 

a. Period in American history in which a national supreme court tended to strike down state laws
b. Algier v. Louisiana (1897) – West Coast Hotel Company v. Perish
c. Interested in protecting the political community and then as much as possible property 

a. It is congress’ duty to define the outer limits of what the legislation allows
i. Can allow the executive branch to work the details out 

manmade law the only standard v. Natural law/right—nature a transcendent
Standard. Law wholly constructed, mechanical unity the important criterion. Civil law
Susceptible of being judged by a criterion of human nature outside its constructed character

Flast v. Cohen lowered the bar for standing to make it easier for taxpayers to sue

• If congress does something under the taxing and spending power, then being a taxpayer is sufficient and
• The violation must be a violation of the taxing and spending power

Some questions are of a political nature and are not justiciable 

Retreats from the political questions doctrine 

theories of law through which courts enforce limits on legislative and executive powers and authority. 

a. Allows for a lot less diversity in the states
b. Gives the national government power over the states 

1. President acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress his authoirty is at its maximum
2. When acting in absence of these authorizations he relies on his independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and congress may have concurrent authority 
3. When President takes measures incompatible with authorities of Congress his power is at its lowest ebb