Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer
Encyclopedia
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, , also commonly referred to as The Steel Seizure Case, was a United States Supreme Court
decision that limited the power of the President of the United States
to seize private property in the absence of either specifically enumerated authority under Article Two of the United States Constitution
or statutory authority conferred on him by Congress. It was a "stinging rebuff" to President Harry Truman.
Justice Hugo Black
's majority decision was, however, qualified by the separate concurring opinion
s of five other members of the Court, making it difficult to determine the details and limits of the President's power to seize private property in emergencies. While a concurrence, Justice Jackson's opinion is used by most legal scholars and Members of Congress to assess Executive power
.
in 1950 when troops from North Korea
invaded the Republic of Korea. President Harry Truman sent troops to South Korea
without asking for a Congressional declaration of war on North Korea — albeit with a United Nations
resolution.
President Truman chose not to impose price controls, as the federal government had done during World War II
. Instead, the administration attempted to avoid inflationary pressures through creation of a Wage Stabilization Board
that sought to keep down the inflation of consumer prices and wages while avoiding labor disputes whenever possible. Those efforts failed, however, to avoid a threatened strike of all of the major steel producers by the United Steel Workers of America when the steel industry rejected the board's proposed wage increases unless they were allowed greater price increases than the government was prepared to approve.
The Truman administration believed that a strike of any length would cause severe dislocations for defense contractors and for the domestic economy as a whole. Unable to mediate the differences between the union and the industry, Truman decided to seize their production facilities, while he kept the current operating management of the companies in place to run the plants under federal direction.
Truman might have, rather than seizing the plants, invoked the national emergency provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act
to prevent the union from striking. The administration rejected that option, however, both from a distaste for the Act, which had been passed over Truman's veto five years earlier, and because the administration saw the industry, rather than the union, as the cause of the crisis.
The administration also rejected use of the statutory procedure provided under Section 18 of the Selective Service Act
of 1948 that might have permitted seizure of the industry's steel plants on the ground that compliance with this procedure was too time-consuming and the outcome of compliance too uncertain. Truman chose not to go to Congress to obtain additional statutory authorization for a seizure of the steel industry for the same reasons. That left invocation of the President's inherent authority to act in response to a national emergency.
The Steelworkers favored government seizure of the plants under any available theory to a Taft-Hartley injunction against it; Arthur Goldberg, General Counsel for the Steelworkers and the Congress of Industrial Organizations
, argued that the President had the inherent power to seize the plants, as well as the statutory authority under the Selective Service Act and the Defense Production Act
.
The steel industry, on the other hand, appears to have been taken by surprise, as it had apparently assumed until shortly before Truman made his April 8, 1952 announcement that he would take the less risky step of seeking a national emergency injunction under the Taft-Hartley Act instead. However, the industry was, as events showed, ready to act once he announced the seizure by a national television
and radio
broadcast.
Because hearings on emergency motions came before a randomly chosen judge, the hearing the next day was before Judge Alexander Holtzoff
, a Truman appointee. Judge Holtzoff denied the motion on the ground that the balance of equities favored the government.
The case was then assigned to Judge David Andrew Pine
, who heard the steel companies' motions for a preliminary injunction
. From a tactical perspective, both sides focused on the wrong issues: the government stressed the ultimate constitutional issue of whether the President had the power to seize the mills in its papers, while the steel companies appeared to be shying away from that issue by focusing on the equities and asking the Court merely to enjoin the federal government from entering into a collective bargaining agreement with the Steelworkers.
Judge Pine indicated, however, that he was interested in the fundamental issue of Presidential power; even so, the steel companies' attorneys continued to steer the discussion back to the equities and the President's statutory power under the Taft-Hartley Act. After the attorney for one of the smaller producers, Armco Steel Corporation, finally challenged the government's right to seize its property without Congressional authorization, Judge Pine then asked the attorney for the government to respond.
The assistant Attorney General may have done more harm to the government's case than the steel companies had. Asked by Judge Pine for the source of the President's authority, he offered "Sections 1, 2 and 3 of Article II of the Constitution
and whatever inherent, implied or residual powers may flow therefrom". When the Court asked if the government took the position that "when the sovereign people adopted the Constitution, . . . it limited the powers of the Congress and limited the powers of the judiciary, but it did not limit the powers of the Executive", he assured Judge Pine that this was the case. He was, however, unable to name any cases that had held that the President had this power.
His presentation committed the Truman administration to an absolutist version of Presidential power that went beyond the administration's own position. Truman's supporters in Congress first distanced themselves from the argument, then spread the message that Truman disavowed it as well. Finally, Truman issued a statement responding to a constituent's letter in which he acknowledged in very general terms the limitations that the Constitution imposed on his power to respond in a national emergency.
Two days later Judge Pine issued an injunction barring the government from continuing to hold the steel plants it had seized. The Steelworkers began their strike within minutes of the announcement of the injunction. The government promptly appealed.
It first, however, formally requested that Judge Pine stay his order, and permit the government to resume control of the plants, ending the strike by the Steelworkers. He declined to do so. The government then applied for a stay in the D.C. Circuit
. The Court, sitting en banc
, granted the government's request for a stay by a five to four vote on April 30, then denied a motion for reconsideration by the steel companies that sought to amend the stay order to bar the government from increasing wages by the same margin the following day. The stay granted by the Court of Appeals was conditioned, however, on the government's filing of a petition for certiorari
by May 2, 1952 and only lasted until the Supreme Court acted on that petition.
The government filed its petition for certiorari on May 2, only to discover that the steel companies had already filed one of their own. The government renewed its request for a stay.
In the meantime, the White House convened a meeting between the Steelworkers and the major steel companies on May 3. Those talks made rapid progress and might have produced an agreement, if the announcement that the Supreme Court had granted certiorari and issued a stay allowing the government to maintain possession of the steel mills—but coupled with an order barring any increase in wages during the pendency of the appeal—had not removed any incentive the steel companies had to reach agreement on a new contract with the union.
through Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation
and seizure of telegraph and railroad lines to the government's seizure of industrial properties in the First
and Second World Wars
.
The steel industry's brief focused instead on the lack of statutory authority for this seizure, emphasizing Congress' decision when enacting the Taft-Hartley Act to give the President the power to seek an injunction against strikes that might affect the national economy instead. It denied that the President had any power to seize private property without express legislative authorization, noting that Truman himself had asked for such legislative authority when the United Mine Workers of America went out on strike in 1950.
The Court set aside five hours for oral argument by the parties, while allowing the Steelworkers and the railroad unions to speak as amicus curiae
. Before an overflow crowd, John W. Davis
argued for the steel companies that the President had no powers to make laws or, more particularly, to seize property without Congressional authorization. He explained away his own actions when he had defended the government's seizure of property while he had been Solicitor General
in the Wilson
administration and urged the justices to look beyond the transitory labor dispute before them to the constitutional principles at stake, closing with Thomas Jefferson
's words, slightly misquoted, "In questions of power let no more be said of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution". Justice Frankfurter
was the only Justice to interrupt Davis with a question, and only one, during his argument.
Truman's Solicitor General Philip B. Perlman had a rockier argument, as the Justices pressed him with questions on many of the points he made. Justice Jackson
took pains to distinguish the facts concerning the seizure of the North American Aviation Company in 1941 which he had overseen as Attorney General
at the time. Justice Douglas
commented that if Perlman were correct as to the scope of the President's powers, then there was no need for Congress. When Perlman attempted to close on a rousing note, reminding the Justices that this was wartime, Justices Jackson and Frankfurter immediately contradicted him, noting that Congress had not declared war.
Goldberg, speaking for the Steelworkers, addressed whether the Taft-Hartley Act would have allowed for injunctive relief in these circumstances. The attorneys for the railroad brotherhoods, who were parties to a similar action coming up for review, addressed the President's inherent powers. Davis then gave his rebuttal, using only a few minutes of the hour he had reserved.
Even despite the Court's evident lack of sympathy for the broad claims of inherent power made by the government, Truman and many other observers expected the Court to uphold his authority to act in the absence of express statutory authorization. Many commentators predicted that the Court would avoid the constitutional question, while others stressed the background that all of the Justices had in the New Deal
and Fair Deal
, when the powers of the Presidency had expanded greatly, and the past support of Justices such as Black
, Reed
, Frankfurter, and Douglas for the expansive application of the President's war powers.
As it turns out, most of those predictions were wrong. While Justice Burton
harbored fears at one point that he might be the only Justice to vote against the government's position, he was encouraged by his private conversations with other Justices. In the end, the Court voted by six to three to affirm the District Court's injunction barring the President from seizing the steel plants.
The Korean War effort increased the demand for steel. Disputes arose between steel industry management and labor that culminated in an announcement of a strike by the union. President Truman authorized Secretary of Commerce Sawyer to take possession of the steel industry and keep the mills operating.
The Attorney General also took the position that "when the sovereign people adopted the Constitution, it limited the powers of the Congress and limited the powers of the judiciary, but it did not limit the powers of the Executive." Goldberg, speaking for the Steelworkers, addressed whether the Taft-Hartley Act would have allowed for injunctive relief in these circumstances. The attorneys for the railroad brotherhoods addressed the President's inherent powers. 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.
Vinson
dissented; Justices Reed and Minton
joined him. His opinion dealt at some length with the history of presidential seizures; in the oral presentation of his opinion he went out of his way to make a sarcastic reference to the contrary positions that Jackson and Clark had taken when they were the Attorneys General for Roosevelt and Truman, respectively. Rejecting the view that Congress had limited the executive's authority to seize property in this case by providing for different procedures in the legislation it had enacted, Vinson's opinion nonetheless appeared to recognize Congress' primacy in enacting legislation, justifying the seizure in this case as necessary to preserve the status quo so that Congress could act in the future, but mocking arguments based on the Constitution's provision allowing the President to recommend legislation, rather than to make it himself, as "the messenger-boy concept of the Office".
Charles Sawyer
to return the steel mills to their owners. Sawyer did so immediately. The Steelworkers went out on strike again shortly thereafter. The strike lasted for more than fifty days until the President threatened to use the somewhat cumbersome procedures under the Selective Service Act to seize the mills.
Truman was stunned by the decision, which he continued to attack years later in his Memoirs. Justice Black was concerned enough that Truman would take the decision personally that he invited Truman and his fellow Justices to a party at his home. Truman, still smarting from the defeat, was mollified somewhat by Black's hospitality; as he told Black, "Hugo, I don't much care for your law, but, by golly, this bourbon
is good".
The multiplicity of opinions made it difficult to determine just what the Court had decided as to whether and when the President had authority to act without Congressional authorization. In large part this was the result of the fact that the administration had made a weak case—the evidence of an actual emergency was tenuous, given the substantial stockpiles of steel products in many sectors of the economy at the time—even weaker by overstating its position and offering incoherent arguments in the early phases of the litigation that turned public opinion against it, while framing the public debate in the most simplistic terms.
The decision nonetheless has had a broad impact. It represented a check on the most extreme claims of executive power at the time. It also represented the Court's assertion of its own role in intervening in political questions, as the Court later did in Baker v. Carr
and Powell v. McCormack
. The Court also applied the Frankfurter-Jackson approach to analyzing Congress' legislative authorization of Presidential action in invalidating efforts by the Nixon administration to plant wiretaps without prior judicial approval, while citing it more generally in support of its decision to permit litigation against the President to proceed in Clinton v. Jones
. The high court also relied on Youngstown in Medellín v. Texas
, 06-984 (2008). In that case, President Bush had pressured the state of Texas
to review the murder conviction of a Mexican
citizen who had tortured and raped two teenage girls in 1993, arguing that a 2004 decision by the International Court of Justice
(ICJ) required law enforcement authorities to tell the accused of his right under the Vienna Convention
to notify Mexican diplomats of his detention. In a 6-to-3 decision, the Court held that ICJ rulings were not enforceable in the United States, and Bush's actions were unconstitutional. Quoting Youngstown Sheet & Tube, Chief Justice
John Roberts concluded, "The president's authority to act, as with the exercise of any governmental power, 'must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.'"
But the Court drew back from some of the implications of its decision, refusing to rely on Youngstown as authority to review the failed challenges brought against the War in Vietnam and deferring to the Executive's authority over foreign policy in cases such as Zemel v. Rusk
. The Court cited Youngstown in the 2006 decision Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
.
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
decision that limited the power of the President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
to seize private property in the absence of either specifically enumerated authority under Article Two of the United States Constitution
Article Two of the United States Constitution
Article Two of the United States Constitution creates the executive branch of the government, consisting of the President and other executive officers.-Clause 1: Executive power:...
or statutory authority conferred on him by Congress. It was a "stinging rebuff" to President Harry Truman.
Justice Hugo Black
Hugo Black
Hugo Lafayette Black was an American politician and jurist. A member of the Democratic Party, Black represented Alabama in the United States Senate from 1927 to 1937, and served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 1971. Black was nominated to the Supreme...
's majority decision was, however, qualified by the separate concurring opinion
Concurring opinion
In law, a concurring opinion is a written opinion by one or more judges of a court which agrees with the decision made by the majority of the court, but states different reasons as the basis for his or her decision...
s of five other members of the Court, making it difficult to determine the details and limits of the President's power to seize private property in emergencies. While a concurrence, Justice Jackson's opinion is used by most legal scholars and Members of Congress to assess Executive power
Executive Power
Executive Power is Vince Flynn's fifth novel, and the fourth to feature Mitch Rapp, an American agent that works for the CIA as an operative for a covert counter terrorism unit called the "Orion Team."-Plot summary:...
.
Background
The United States was in the Korean WarKorean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
in 1950 when troops from North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
invaded the Republic of Korea. President Harry Truman sent troops to South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
without asking for a Congressional declaration of war on North Korea — albeit with a United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
resolution.
President Truman chose not to impose price controls, as the federal government had done during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Instead, the administration attempted to avoid inflationary pressures through creation of a Wage Stabilization Board
Wage Stabilization Board
The Wage Stabilization Board was set up by President Harry Truman within the United States Department of Labor, in December 1945, to take over the work of the National War Labor Board...
that sought to keep down the inflation of consumer prices and wages while avoiding labor disputes whenever possible. Those efforts failed, however, to avoid a threatened strike of all of the major steel producers by the United Steel Workers of America when the steel industry rejected the board's proposed wage increases unless they were allowed greater price increases than the government was prepared to approve.
The Truman administration believed that a strike of any length would cause severe dislocations for defense contractors and for the domestic economy as a whole. Unable to mediate the differences between the union and the industry, Truman decided to seize their production facilities, while he kept the current operating management of the companies in place to run the plants under federal direction.
Truman might have, rather than seizing the plants, invoked the national emergency provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act
Taft-Hartley Act
The Labor–Management Relations Act is a United States federal law that monitors the activities and power of labor unions. The act, still effective, was sponsored by Senator Robert Taft and Representative Fred A. Hartley, Jr. and became law by overriding U.S. President Harry S...
to prevent the union from striking. The administration rejected that option, however, both from a distaste for the Act, which had been passed over Truman's veto five years earlier, and because the administration saw the industry, rather than the union, as the cause of the crisis.
The administration also rejected use of the statutory procedure provided under Section 18 of the Selective Service Act
Selective Service Act
Selective Service Act may refer to:* Selective Service Act of 1917, or Selective Draft Act, which was passed by the Congress of the United States on May 18, 1917. It was for men to go to WWI at a young age....
of 1948 that might have permitted seizure of the industry's steel plants on the ground that compliance with this procedure was too time-consuming and the outcome of compliance too uncertain. Truman chose not to go to Congress to obtain additional statutory authorization for a seizure of the steel industry for the same reasons. That left invocation of the President's inherent authority to act in response to a national emergency.
The Steelworkers favored government seizure of the plants under any available theory to a Taft-Hartley injunction against it; Arthur Goldberg, General Counsel for the Steelworkers and the Congress of Industrial Organizations
Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...
, argued that the President had the inherent power to seize the plants, as well as the statutory authority under the Selective Service Act and the Defense Production Act
Defense Production Act
The Defense Production Act is a United States law enacted on September 8, 1950, in response to the start of the Korean War. It was part of a broad civil defense and war mobilization effort in the context of the Cold War. Its implementing regulations, the Defense Priorities and Allocation System ,...
.
The steel industry, on the other hand, appears to have been taken by surprise, as it had apparently assumed until shortly before Truman made his April 8, 1952 announcement that he would take the less risky step of seeking a national emergency injunction under the Taft-Hartley Act instead. However, the industry was, as events showed, ready to act once he announced the seizure by a national television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
and radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
broadcast.
Prior history
The steel companies reacted immediately, sending attorneys to the home of United States District Judge Walter Bastian within a half hour of the end of the President's speech to ask for issuance of a temporary restraining order. Judge Bastian scheduled a hearing for 11:30 the next day to hear arguments on the motion.Because hearings on emergency motions came before a randomly chosen judge, the hearing the next day was before Judge Alexander Holtzoff
Alexander Holtzoff
Alexander Holtzoff was a United States federal judge.Born in New York, New York, Holtzoff received an A.B. from Columbia University in 1908, an M.A. from Columbia University in 1909, and an LL.B. from Columbia Law School in 1911...
, a Truman appointee. Judge Holtzoff denied the motion on the ground that the balance of equities favored the government.
The case was then assigned to Judge David Andrew Pine
David Andrew Pine
David Andrew Pine was a United States district court judge.Born in Washington, D.C., Pine earned an LL.B. at the Georgetown University Law School in 1913, then clerked for clerk to U.S. Attorney General James McReynolds from 1914 to 1916. He was an attorney for the U.S...
, who heard the steel companies' motions for a preliminary injunction
Injunction
An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that requires a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...
. From a tactical perspective, both sides focused on the wrong issues: the government stressed the ultimate constitutional issue of whether the President had the power to seize the mills in its papers, while the steel companies appeared to be shying away from that issue by focusing on the equities and asking the Court merely to enjoin the federal government from entering into a collective bargaining agreement with the Steelworkers.
Judge Pine indicated, however, that he was interested in the fundamental issue of Presidential power; even so, the steel companies' attorneys continued to steer the discussion back to the equities and the President's statutory power under the Taft-Hartley Act. After the attorney for one of the smaller producers, Armco Steel Corporation, finally challenged the government's right to seize its property without Congressional authorization, Judge Pine then asked the attorney for the government to respond.
The assistant Attorney General may have done more harm to the government's case than the steel companies had. Asked by Judge Pine for the source of the President's authority, he offered "Sections 1, 2 and 3 of Article II of the Constitution
Article Two of the United States Constitution
Article Two of the United States Constitution creates the executive branch of the government, consisting of the President and other executive officers.-Clause 1: Executive power:...
and whatever inherent, implied or residual powers may flow therefrom". When the Court asked if the government took the position that "when the sovereign people adopted the Constitution, . . . it limited the powers of the Congress and limited the powers of the judiciary, but it did not limit the powers of the Executive", he assured Judge Pine that this was the case. He was, however, unable to name any cases that had held that the President had this power.
His presentation committed the Truman administration to an absolutist version of Presidential power that went beyond the administration's own position. Truman's supporters in Congress first distanced themselves from the argument, then spread the message that Truman disavowed it as well. Finally, Truman issued a statement responding to a constituent's letter in which he acknowledged in very general terms the limitations that the Constitution imposed on his power to respond in a national emergency.
Two days later Judge Pine issued an injunction barring the government from continuing to hold the steel plants it had seized. The Steelworkers began their strike within minutes of the announcement of the injunction. The government promptly appealed.
It first, however, formally requested that Judge Pine stay his order, and permit the government to resume control of the plants, ending the strike by the Steelworkers. He declined to do so. The government then applied for a stay in the D.C. Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit known informally as the D.C. Circuit, is the federal appellate court for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Appeals from the D.C. Circuit, as with all the U.S. Courts of Appeals, are heard on a...
. The Court, sitting en banc
En banc
En banc, in banc, in banco or in bank is a French term used to refer to the hearing of a legal case where all judges of a court will hear the case , rather than a panel of them. It is often used for unusually complex cases or cases considered to be of greater importance...
, granted the government's request for a stay by a five to four vote on April 30, then denied a motion for reconsideration by the steel companies that sought to amend the stay order to bar the government from increasing wages by the same margin the following day. The stay granted by the Court of Appeals was conditioned, however, on the government's filing of a petition for certiorari
Certiorari
Certiorari is a type of writ seeking judicial review, recognized in U.S., Roman, English, Philippine, and other law. Certiorari is the present passive infinitive of the Latin certiorare...
by May 2, 1952 and only lasted until the Supreme Court acted on that petition.
The government filed its petition for certiorari on May 2, only to discover that the steel companies had already filed one of their own. The government renewed its request for a stay.
In the meantime, the White House convened a meeting between the Steelworkers and the major steel companies on May 3. Those talks made rapid progress and might have produced an agreement, if the announcement that the Supreme Court had granted certiorari and issued a stay allowing the government to maintain possession of the steel mills—but coupled with an order barring any increase in wages during the pendency of the appeal—had not removed any incentive the steel companies had to reach agreement on a new contract with the union.
Proceedings before the Court
The Court set the matter for oral argument on May 12, 1952, less than ten days later. The government's brief opened with an attack on Judge Pine's application of equitable principles to the facts before him, but devoted much of its 175 pages to the historical records of governmental seizure of private property during wartime, from the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...
through Lincoln's
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War using his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with nearly...
and seizure of telegraph and railroad lines to the government's seizure of industrial properties in the First
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and Second World Wars
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
The steel industry's brief focused instead on the lack of statutory authority for this seizure, emphasizing Congress' decision when enacting the Taft-Hartley Act to give the President the power to seek an injunction against strikes that might affect the national economy instead. It denied that the President had any power to seize private property without express legislative authorization, noting that Truman himself had asked for such legislative authority when the United Mine Workers of America went out on strike in 1950.
The Court set aside five hours for oral argument by the parties, while allowing the Steelworkers and the railroad unions to speak as amicus curiae
Amicus curiae
An amicus curiae is someone, not a party to a case, who volunteers to offer information to assist a court in deciding a matter before it...
. Before an overflow crowd, John W. Davis
John W. Davis
John William Davis was an American politician, diplomat and lawyer. He served as a United States Representative from West Virginia , then as Solicitor General of the United States and US Ambassador to the UK under President Woodrow Wilson...
argued for the steel companies that the President had no powers to make laws or, more particularly, to seize property without Congressional authorization. He explained away his own actions when he had defended the government's seizure of property while he had been Solicitor General
United States Solicitor General
The United States Solicitor General is the person appointed to represent the federal government of the United States before the Supreme Court of the United States. The current Solicitor General, Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. was confirmed by the United States Senate on June 6, 2011 and sworn in on June...
in the Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
administration and urged the justices to look beyond the transitory labor dispute before them to the constitutional principles at stake, closing with Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
's words, slightly misquoted, "In questions of power let no more be said of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution". Justice Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.-Early life:Frankfurter was born into a Jewish family on November 15, 1882, in Vienna, Austria, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Europe. He was the third of six children of Leopold and Emma Frankfurter...
was the only Justice to interrupt Davis with a question, and only one, during his argument.
Truman's Solicitor General Philip B. Perlman had a rockier argument, as the Justices pressed him with questions on many of the points he made. Justice Jackson
Robert H. Jackson
Robert Houghwout Jackson was United States Attorney General and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court . He was also the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials...
took pains to distinguish the facts concerning the seizure of the North American Aviation Company in 1941 which he had overseen as Attorney General
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general, or attorney-general, is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.The term is used to refer to any person...
at the time. Justice Douglas
William O. Douglas
William Orville Douglas was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. With a term lasting 36 years and 209 days, he is the longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court...
commented that if Perlman were correct as to the scope of the President's powers, then there was no need for Congress. When Perlman attempted to close on a rousing note, reminding the Justices that this was wartime, Justices Jackson and Frankfurter immediately contradicted him, noting that Congress had not declared war.
Goldberg, speaking for the Steelworkers, addressed whether the Taft-Hartley Act would have allowed for injunctive relief in these circumstances. The attorneys for the railroad brotherhoods, who were parties to a similar action coming up for review, addressed the President's inherent powers. Davis then gave his rebuttal, using only a few minutes of the hour he had reserved.
Even despite the Court's evident lack of sympathy for the broad claims of inherent power made by the government, Truman and many other observers expected the Court to uphold his authority to act in the absence of express statutory authorization. Many commentators predicted that the Court would avoid the constitutional question, while others stressed the background that all of the Justices had in the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
and Fair Deal
Fair Deal
The Fair Deal was the term given to an ambitious set of proposals put forward by United States President Harry S. Truman to the United States Congress in his January 1949 State of the Union address. The term, however, has also been used to describe the domestic reform agenda of the Truman...
, when the powers of the Presidency had expanded greatly, and the past support of Justices such as Black
Hugo Black
Hugo Lafayette Black was an American politician and jurist. A member of the Democratic Party, Black represented Alabama in the United States Senate from 1927 to 1937, and served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 1971. Black was nominated to the Supreme...
, Reed
Stanley Forman Reed
Stanley Forman Reed was a noted American attorney who served as United States Solicitor General from 1935 to 1938 and as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1938 to 1957. He was the last Supreme Court Justice who did not graduate from law school Stanley Forman Reed (December 31,...
, Frankfurter, and Douglas for the expansive application of the President's war powers.
As it turns out, most of those predictions were wrong. While Justice Burton
Harold Hitz Burton
Harold Hitz Burton was an American politician and lawyer.He served as the 45th mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, as a U.S. Senator from Ohio, and as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was known as a dispassionate jurist who prized equal justice under the law.-Biography:He...
harbored fears at one point that he might be the only Justice to vote against the government's position, he was encouraged by his private conversations with other Justices. In the end, the Court voted by six to three to affirm the District Court's injunction barring the President from seizing the steel plants.
Majority opinion
Justice Black wrote for the majority, although the number of divergent concurring opinions made it clear that he did not necessarily speak for it. Black took, as he often did, an absolutist view, holding that the President had no power to act except in those cases expressly or implicitly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress.The Korean War effort increased the demand for steel. Disputes arose between steel industry management and labor that culminated in an announcement of a strike by the union. President Truman authorized Secretary of Commerce Sawyer to take possession of the steel industry and keep the mills operating.
The Attorney General also took the position that "when the sovereign people adopted the Constitution, it limited the powers of the Congress and limited the powers of the judiciary, but it did not limit the powers of the Executive." Goldberg, speaking for the Steelworkers, addressed whether the Taft-Hartley Act would have allowed for injunctive relief in these circumstances. The attorneys for the railroad brotherhoods addressed the President's inherent powers. 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.
William O. Douglas
Douglas took a similarly absolutist approach to the President's assertion of inherent power to cope with a national emergency.Felix Frankfurter
Frankfurter avoided the sweeping condemnation of the administration's claims that Black and Douglas had offered. While he would not rule out the possibility that the President might acquire the power to take certain actions by a long course of conduct unobjected to by Congress, he found the statutory history persuasive evidence that Congress had not acquiesced, much less authorized seizure of private property in the absence of a formal declaration of war.Robert Jackson
Jackson's opinion took a similarly flexible approach to the issue, eschewing any fixed boundaries between Congress' and the President's power. Jackson divided Presidential authority vis a vis Congress into three categories, ranked in descending order of legitimacy: (1) those cases in which the President was acting with express or implied authority from Congress, (2) cases in which Congress had thus far been silent, and (3) cases in which the President was defying congressional orders. He classified this case as falling within the third category.Harold Hitz Burton
Burton likewise held that Congress, not the President, possessed the power to act in emergencies because it had exclusive power to pass legislation. He relied on the language and legislative history of the Taft-Hartley Act to find that Congress had not authorized seizure of plants involved in a labor dispute without express legislative authorization. He hedged, however, on whether the President might, in more extreme circumstances, have authority to act.Tom Campbell Clark
Justice Clark, who had been Truman's Attorney General for four years before Truman appointed him to the Court, rejected Black's and Douglas' absolutist approach, holding that the President did have some inherent power to act in the case of grave and imperative national emergencies. Clark refused, however, to define the boundaries of that power; in his view the fact that Congress had provided in the Taft-Hartley Act, the Selective Service Act or the Defense Production Act for procedures that the executive could have used, ended the discussion by barring the President from relying on any inherent powers he might otherwise have to choose a solution other than the ones that Congress had allowed.Dissenting opinion
Chief JusticeChief Justice of the United States
The Chief Justice of the United States is the head of the United States federal court system and the chief judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Chief Justice is one of nine Supreme Court justices; the other eight are the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States...
Vinson
Fred M. Vinson
Frederick Moore Vinson served the United States in all three branches of government and was the most prominent member of the Vinson political family. In the legislative branch, he was an elected member of the United States House of Representatives from Louisa, Kentucky, for twelve years...
dissented; Justices Reed and Minton
Sherman Minton
Sherman "Shay" Minton was a Democratic United States Senator from Indiana and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was the most educated justice during his time on the Supreme Court, having attended Indiana University, Yale and the Sorbonne...
joined him. His opinion dealt at some length with the history of presidential seizures; in the oral presentation of his opinion he went out of his way to make a sarcastic reference to the contrary positions that Jackson and Clark had taken when they were the Attorneys General for Roosevelt and Truman, respectively. Rejecting the view that Congress had limited the executive's authority to seize property in this case by providing for different procedures in the legislation it had enacted, Vinson's opinion nonetheless appeared to recognize Congress' primacy in enacting legislation, justifying the seizure in this case as necessary to preserve the status quo so that Congress could act in the future, but mocking arguments based on the Constitution's provision allowing the President to recommend legislation, rather than to make it himself, as "the messenger-boy concept of the Office".
Effects of the decision
Within minutes of the Court's ruling, Truman ordered Commerce SecretaryUnited States Secretary of Commerce
The United States Secretary of Commerce is the head of the United States Department of Commerce concerned with business and industry; the Department states its mission to be "to foster, promote, and develop the foreign and domestic commerce"...
Charles Sawyer
Charles W. Sawyer
Charles W. Sawyer was United States Secretary of Commerce from May 6, 1948 to January 20, 1953 in the administration of Harry Truman....
to return the steel mills to their owners. Sawyer did so immediately. The Steelworkers went out on strike again shortly thereafter. The strike lasted for more than fifty days until the President threatened to use the somewhat cumbersome procedures under the Selective Service Act to seize the mills.
Truman was stunned by the decision, which he continued to attack years later in his Memoirs. Justice Black was concerned enough that Truman would take the decision personally that he invited Truman and his fellow Justices to a party at his home. Truman, still smarting from the defeat, was mollified somewhat by Black's hospitality; as he told Black, "Hugo, I don't much care for your law, but, by golly, this bourbon
Bourbon whiskey
Bourbon is a type of American whiskey – a barrel-aged distilled spirit made primarily from corn. The name of the spirit derives from its historical association with an area known as Old Bourbon, around what is now Bourbon County, Kentucky . It has been produced since the 18th century...
is good".
The multiplicity of opinions made it difficult to determine just what the Court had decided as to whether and when the President had authority to act without Congressional authorization. In large part this was the result of the fact that the administration had made a weak case—the evidence of an actual emergency was tenuous, given the substantial stockpiles of steel products in many sectors of the economy at the time—even weaker by overstating its position and offering incoherent arguments in the early phases of the litigation that turned public opinion against it, while framing the public debate in the most simplistic terms.
The decision nonetheless has had a broad impact. It represented a check on the most extreme claims of executive power at the time. It also represented the Court's assertion of its own role in intervening in political questions, as the Court later did in Baker v. Carr
Baker v. Carr
Baker v. Carr, , was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that retreated from the Court's political question doctrine, deciding that redistricting issues present justiciable questions, thus enabling federal courts to intervene in and to decide reapportionment cases...
and Powell v. McCormack
Powell v. McCormack
Powell v. McCormack, was a United States Supreme Court case decided in 1969. It answered the question of whether Congress has the authority to exclude from being sworn in and enrolled upon its rolls a person who has been duly elected or appointed by the people or the executive authority of his/her...
. The Court also applied the Frankfurter-Jackson approach to analyzing Congress' legislative authorization of Presidential action in invalidating efforts by the Nixon administration to plant wiretaps without prior judicial approval, while citing it more generally in support of its decision to permit litigation against the President to proceed in Clinton v. Jones
Clinton v. Jones
Clinton v. Jones, , was a landmark United States Supreme Court case establishing that a sitting President of the United States has no immunity from civil law litigation against him, for acts done before taking office and unrelated to the office....
. The high court also relied on Youngstown in Medellín v. Texas
Medellín v. Texas
Medellín v. Texas, 552 U.S. 491 is a United States Supreme Court decision which held that while an international treaty may constitute an international commitment, it is not binding domestic law unless Congress has enacted statutes implementing it or unless the treaty itself is "self-executing";...
, 06-984 (2008). In that case, President Bush had pressured the state of Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
to review the murder conviction of a Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
citizen who had tortured and raped two teenage girls in 1993, arguing that a 2004 decision by the International Court of Justice
International Court of Justice
The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands...
(ICJ) required law enforcement authorities to tell the accused of his right under the Vienna Convention
Vienna Convention
Vienna Convention can mean any of a number of treaties signed in Vienna. Notable are:* several treaties and conventions resulted from the Congress of Vienna which redrew the map of Europe, only partially restoring the pre-Napoleonic situation, and drafted new rules for international relations*...
to notify Mexican diplomats of his detention. In a 6-to-3 decision, the Court held that ICJ rulings were not enforceable in the United States, and Bush's actions were unconstitutional. Quoting Youngstown Sheet & Tube, Chief Justice
Chief Justice of the United States
The Chief Justice of the United States is the head of the United States federal court system and the chief judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Chief Justice is one of nine Supreme Court justices; the other eight are the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States...
John Roberts concluded, "The president's authority to act, as with the exercise of any governmental power, 'must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.'"
But the Court drew back from some of the implications of its decision, refusing to rely on Youngstown as authority to review the failed challenges brought against the War in Vietnam and deferring to the Executive's authority over foreign policy in cases such as Zemel v. Rusk
Zemel v. Rusk
Zemel v. Rusk, , 381 U.S. 1 is a case on the right to travel and area restrictions on passports , holding that the Secretary of State is statutorily authorized to refuse to validate the passports of United States citizens for travel to Cuba and that the exercise of that authority is...
. The Court cited Youngstown in the 2006 decision Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 , is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay lack "the power to proceed because its structures and procedures violate both the Uniform Code of Military...
.