United States v. Butler

297 U.S. 1 (1936), argued 9–10 Dec. 1935, decided 6 Jan. 1936, by vote of 6 to 3; Roberts for the Court, Stone, Brandeis, and Cardozo in dissent. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 represented a major New Deal effort to ameliorate the depression in agriculture and raise farm prices by limiting production. Farmers who agreed to reduce crop acreage received benefit payments, the funds coming from a tax levied on the first processor of the commodities involved. Butler, a processor, refused to pay the tax. The circuit court of appeals upheld Butler, and the government appealed.

By a vote of 6 to 3 in United States v. Butler the Supreme Court declared the tax unconstitutional. Justice Owen J. Roberts's opinion for the majority, characterized by Leonard Levy as “monumentally inept,” undertook a preliminary explanation of the Court's limited role in deciding constitutional questions. The judicial duty was simply “to lay the Article of the Constitution which is invoked beside the statute which is challenged and to decide whether the latter squares with the former” (p. 62). This simplistic explanation of the process of constitutional interpretation has been generally considered unrealistic.

Roberts did, however, settle a long‐standing dispute concerning the taxing power of Congress. Article I, section 8, authorizes Congress to levy taxes “to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. …” James Madison contended that “general welfare” purposes were limited to authorizations elsewhere in the Constitution, whereas Alexander Hamilton held that this language amounted to an independent power to tax and spend, provided only that the “general welfare” was served. Accepting Hamilton's view, Roberts determined that the processing taxes were justified under the General Welfare Clause.

Roberts's support for the spending power was irrelevant, however, for he immediately transferred the argument to an entirely new issue. Whether the spending was for national rather than local welfare was of no consequence, because the statutory plan to regulate and control agricultural production invaded the reserved powers of the states and so was invalid under the Tenth Amendment.

Justices Harlan F. Stone, Louis D. Brandeis, and Benjamin N. Cardozo dissented. In a scathing rebuttal Stone called Roberts's ruling “a tortured construction of the Constitution” (p. 87). But the most widely noted language in Stone's dissent was his warning against judicial arrogance: “Courts are not the only agency of government that must be assumed to have capacity to govern. … [T]he only check upon our own exercise of power is our own sense of self‐restraint” (p. 79). These words were widely read as a rebuke to the Court's conservatives who had been declaring New Deal statutes unconstitutional.

As a threat to other New Deal programs, the Roberts opinion was soon a dead letter. The tax provisions of the Social Security Act were upheld in Steward Machine Co. v. Davis (1937), and the agricultural program struck down in Butler was reenacted by Congress under the commerce power and upheld in Mulford v. Smith (1939) and Wickard v. Filburn (1942).

In retrospect, the principal positive contribution of the Butler majority is the principle, as restated by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger in Fullilove v. Klutznick (1980), that the power to provide for the general welfare “is an independent grant of legislative authority, distinct from other broad congressional powers” (p. 247). Otherwise, the opinion by Roberts is valueless. Justice Felix Frankfurter in International Association of Machinists v. Street (1961) spoke of “the severely criticized, indeed rather discredited case of United States v. Butler” (p. 807). The most enduring feature of the decision is Stone's dissent; his plea for judicial self‐restraint has been invoked on many subsequent occasions by Court minorities, both liberal and conservative. In Shapiro v. Thompson (1969) Justice John M. Harlan cited the Butler fiasco in warning his colleague that cases come to the Court with “an extreme heavy presumption of validity” (p. 675).

See also General Welfare; Judicial Self‐Restraint; Taxing and Spending Clause.

— C. Herman Pritchett

United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936), also known as the Hoosac Mills case, eviscerated the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 (AAA), dealing a blow to New Deal agricultural policy. AAA provided payments to farmers who agreed to reduce production acreage; these benefits were paid from the proceeds of a tax on commodities processors. In a 6 to 3 decision, the Supreme Court found that while the tax itself was justified under the "general welfare" clause of the Constitution, its intended use was "coercive" and thus unconstitutional. AAA violated the Tenth Amendment by attempting to use the taxing power to regulate agricultural production—a matter that the Court determined was the sole jurisdiction of the states.

Bibliography

Brinkley, Alan. The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War. New York: Knopf, 1995.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2007)

United States v. Butler
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 9–10, 1935 Decided January 6, 1936
Full case name	United States v. Butler, et al.
Citations	297 U.S. 1 (more)
Holding
The Agricultural Adjustment Act is an unconstitutional exercise of power.
Court membership
Chief Justice Charles E. Hughes Associate Justices Willis Van Devanter · James C. McReynolds Louis Brandeis · George Sutherland Pierce Butler · Harlan F. Stone Owen J. Roberts · Benjamin N. Cardozo
Case opinions
Majority	Roberts, joined by Hughes, Van Devanter, McReynolds, Sutherland, Butler
Dissent	Stone, joined by Brandeis, Cardozo
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. X, Agricultural Adjustment Act

United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the processing taxes instituted under the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act were unconstitutional. Justice Owen Josephus Roberts argued that the tax was "but a means to an unconstitutional end" that violated the Tenth Amendment.^[1][2]

Contents 1 A tax for an impermissible regulatory purpose 2 Taxation for the general welfare 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

A tax for an impermissible regulatory purpose

The main point of the case was whether certain provisions of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 conflicted with the Constitution. In the Act, a tax was imposed on processors of farm products, the proceeds to be paid to farmers who would reduce their area and crops. The intent of the act was to increase the prices of certain farm products by decreasing the quantities produced.

The Court held that the so-called tax was not a true tax, because the payments to farmers were coupled with unlawful and oppressive coercive contracts and the proceeds were earmarked for the benefit of farmers complying with the prescribed conditions. Making the payment of a government subsidy to a farmer conditional on the reduction of his planned crops went beyond the powers of the national government. Specifically, the Court said:

The act invades the reserved rights of the states. It is a statutory plan to regulate and control agricultural production, a matter beyond the powers delegated to the federal government. The tax, the appropriation of the funds raised, and the direction for their disbursement, are but parts of the plan. They are but means to an unconstitutional end.

Taxation for the general welfare

Although it struck down the Act, the Court dealt positively with taxation and the expenditure of funds to advance the general welfare as specified in Article 1 § 8 of the Constitution. The Court stated that the issue “presents the great and the controlling question in the case.” After comparing expansive vs. restrictive interpretations of the Spending Clause, the Court adopted the philosophy that:

The clause confers a power separate and distinct from those later enumerated [,] is not restricted in meaning by the grant of them, and Congress consequently has a substantive power to tax and to appropriate, limited only by the requirement that it shall be exercised to provide for the general welfare of the United States. … It results that the power of Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the Constitution.

The fact that the Court struck down the Act despite an expansive interpretation of the Spending Clause reflects the turmoil in the Court’s thinking at this critical time.^{[citation needed]} Indicating that turmoil and the fact that Butler was a turning point in the Court’s thinking, in later jurisprudence Butler has been referenced to support expansion of authority under the Spending Clause (e.g., Steward Machine Company v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548 (1937)) and to dissent from such expansion (e.g. South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987), O’Connor dissent.) In her dissent, Justice O’Connor noted that Butler was the last case in which the Supreme Court struck down an Act of Congress as beyond the authority granted by the Spending Clause.

This was part of a series of cases decided by the conservative Supreme Court of the time period which declared unconstitutional parts of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation.

See also

• Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States
• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 297

References

1. ^ http://www.oyez.org/cases/1901-1939/1935/1935_401/
2. ^ http://www.agh-attorneys.com/4_us_v_butler.htm

External links

• United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936) (opinion full text).

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