Youngstown (p. 351)

 In April of 1952, during the Korean War, President Truman issued an executive order directing Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer to seize and operate most of the nation's steel mills.

This was done in order to avert the expected effects of a general strike by the United Steelworkers of America. 

Issue:  Did the President have the constitutional authority to seize and operate the steel mills?

In a 6-to-3 decision, the Court held that the President did not have the authority to issue such an order. The Court found that there was no congressional statute that authorized the President to take possession of private property.

The Court also held that the President's military power as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces did not extend to labor disputes.

 The President argued that this 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.’” P. 353

How did the Court analyze the issue?

Page 353: "In the framework of our Constitution, the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that that he is to be a lawmaker."

Page 352:: "The President's power, if any, to issue the order must stem from either an Act of Congress or from the Constitution itself."

Are there any express Constitutional grants of this Presidential power?

Commander in Chief? See p. 353.

Which branch has the power to regulate interstate commerce?

To spend money to pay compensation for the property seized?

Let's take a look at Justice Jackson's concurring opinion on p. 354-355:

 

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.

 

Which one of these three scenarios governs this case?

 

P. 355 (Jackson): “. . . [T]he current seizure [can] 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.”

 

The Court holds (p. 353) that: “This is a job for the Nation’s lawmakers, not for its military authorities.” As the Court puts it: “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.” Id.

 But notice this final warning from Justice Jackson (p. 355):

“But I have no illusion that any decision by this Court can keep power in the hands of Congress if it is not wise and timely in meeting its problems. A crisis that challenges the President equally, or perhaps primarily, challenges Congress. If not good law, there was worldly wisdom in the maxim attributed to Napoleon that 'The tools belong to the man who can use them.' We may say that power to legislate for emergencies belongs in the hands of Congress, but only Congress itself can prevent power from slipping through its fingers.”