Separation of Powers - Non Delegation COPY

Question 1

When is Congress allowed to delegate its law making tasks to either other branches or regulatory commissions?

Answer 1

Courts stated that commissions are allowed to take over law making duties for Congress as long as Congress gives the commissions:

1) Sufficient Guidelines as to the goals of the commission.
2) Specific requirements for making the rules.
3) Then the commission must work within these guidelines.

Question 2

What is the rule from INS v. Chadha about who it can delegate duties too?

Answer 2

Congress cannot delegate to itself, it must either make the decision itself, or delegate it elsewhere, it cannot do a mixture of both.

Question 3

What is the rule about severabiliity of statutes when a portion of a statute is being challenged?

Answer 3

If a portion of a statute is challenged, the court must decide whether Congress would have still passed the bill without that portion of the statute.
Severability does not ask if whether the act standing alone would be constitutional. It tries to read Congress’s mind to decide whether if they had known that the legislative veto was unconstitutional, if they would have still created the act

Question 4

What do the functionalists and formalists argue in INS v. Chadha about the legislative veto.

Answer 4

Majority: Formalist view
Agrees with Chadha in saying that Congress cannot use a legislative veto on a commission. They either have to retain all the power or give it all away. They cannot give the power to a commission and then keep some strings to control it.
Minority: Functionalist
Argues that allowing a legislative veto is better off the separation of powers because it makes it so the executive branch cannot gain too much power or the legislature would strike it down.

Question 5

What is the “line item veto” in Clinton v. City of New York?

Answer 5

The President is allowed to veto individual provisions of certain kinds of bills, mainly tax and spending bills. They are also allowed to do this after the bill has already gone into effect, unlike the normal veto where it is all or nothing and must be done before a bill goes into effect.

Question 6

What does the formalists and functionalist say about the line item veto in Clinton v. New York?

Answer 6

Functionalist = dissent
This is so much easier and convenient for Congress. Rather than having to pass 100 smaller bills about spending, they could pass one with 100 provisions in a single bill and the President could veto what he doesn’t approve of.
Formalist = majority
 The line item veto act violates the presentment clause of the constitution because he is essentially creating law, and that is reserved for the legislature.
 The Presidents job is very clear, he can either accept all of it, or none of it, there is no middle ground for him.
 If Congress wanted to allow this sort of thing, they must amend the constitution to allow it.