Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer

343 U.S. 579 (1952), argued 12–13 May 1952, decided 2 June 1952 by vote of 6 to 3; black for the Court, Frankfurter, Douglas, Jackson, Burton, and Clark concurring, Vinson, Reed, and Minton in dissent. This decision rejected the argument that President Harry S. Truman had inherent constitutional authority to issue an executive order seizing private steel mills in 1952.

Apprehensive that an impending strike by steelworkers would harm the country's participation in the United Nations' police action in Korea, President Truman issued an executive order instructing Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer to seize and operate the nation's steel mills. Secretary Sawyer directed the companies' presidents to operate the facilities in compliance with government regulations. The president immediately gave Congress formal notice of his action, but Congress took no action. Although the seizure lacked statutory authority, Truman took the view that his action was valid under the powers invested in him as president and commander in chief. He relied upon the many historical precedents of executive seizure without the consent of Congress.

The steel industry argued that the purpose of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 (Taft‐Hartley Act) was to allow the parties to arrive at a settlement and to permit Congress to become involved if collective bargaining was unsuccessful. The fact that Congress had specifically rejected a seizure provision during the debate of this act could only be interpreted as a prohibition against executive seizure.

The opinions of the justices reflected the two polar interpretations of the first clause of Article II of the Constitution: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States.”

Justice Hugo Black, writing for the Court, held that inasmuch as Congress could have directed the seizure of the steel mills, the president had no power to do so without an express prior congressional authorization. Black insisted that each of the popular branches must be left to carry out its duties according to the original constitutional understanding. The power exercised by Truman was clearly a law‐making task that properly belonged only to Congress.

Concurring, Justice Felix Frankfurter suggested that long‐standing executive practices, with the silent acquiescence of Congress, might provide an additional gloss on the executive powers. Justice William O. Douglas concurred, observing that Congress has the power to pay compensation and is the only branch able to authorize a lawful seizure.

Justice Robert Jackson also concurred and distinguished constitutional situations in which presidential powers fluctuate: strongest with a congressional authorization, weakest against a congressional prohibition, and uncertain alongside a congressional silence. Jackson concluded that the president acted unconstitutionally because Congress had refused to authorize the seizure.

Justice Harold Burton concurred because Congress had prescribed specific procedures exclusive of seizure. Justice Tom Clark, who as attorney general had earlier advised Truman, concurred because the president's authority to act in times of national emergency was subject to the limitations expressly prescribed by Congress.

Chief Justice Fred Vinson dissented, joined by Justices Stanley Reed and Sherman Minton, and surveyed the elements of the emergency: the Korean military involvement, the importance of steel as a war material, and the impasse in the labor negotiation. Presidential emergency action had been allowed in the past, and the dissent concluded that the president acted constitutionally.

This decision, especially Justice Jackson's concurring opinion, has provided an important precedent for resisting subsequent claims of presidential inherent authority in areas such as impoundment, executive privilege, electronic surveillance, national security, and the “war on terror”. The holding has come to be generally understood as an interpretive effort to restrain the executive branch within a proper separation of power.

See also Inherent Powers; Labor; Presidential Emergency Powers; Separation of Powers; War Powers.

Bibliography

• Maeva Marcus, Truman and the Steel Seizure Case—the Limits of Presidential Power, rev. ed. (1994).
• William H. Rehnquist, The Supreme Court, rev. ed. (2001).
• Alan F. Westin, The Anatomy of A Constitutional Law Case, rev. ed. (1990)

— Thomas E. Baker

• 343 U.S. 579 (1952)
• Vote: 6–3
• For the Court: Black
• Concurring: Frankfurter, Douglas, Jackson, Burton, and Clark
• Dissenting: Vinson, Reed, and Minton In the spring of 1952, the United States was in the midst of the Korean War, and the nation's steelworkers were about to go on strike. Harry Truman and his advisers feared a long strike could bring disaster: U.S. troops in Korea might run short of weapons and ammunition.

The President acted forcefully. On April 8, a few hours before the expected start of the strike, Truman issued Executive Order No. 10340. This order directed Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer to take control of the nation's steel mills temporarily and to keep them running. The steel companies accepted the order but moved to fight Truman's action in court.

Taking temporary control of the steel mills was not the only alternative open to Truman. The President had another way to deal with the strike. He chose not to use it.

In 1947 Congress had passed the TaftHartley Act. Under this law, the President could get a court order delaying the strike for 80 days. During this “cooling off” period, the steelworkers' union and the mill owners would have tried to settle their differences.

Truman disliked the Taft-Hartley Act. He thought it was anti-labor. He had vetoed it in 1947, but Congress had overridden his veto. He had never used the law and would not do so in the steel strike.

Furthermore, Truman believed the blame for the strike did not lie with the steelworkers. The union had already postponed the strike four times in an effort to reach a settlement. Government arbitrators had recommended a compromise, which the union had accepted. The steel companies had rejected those recommendations, even though in 1951 the companies earned their greatest profits in more than 30 years. President Truman believed the steel companies were using the emergency of the Korean War to force the steelworkers to accept low wages. Under such circumstances Truman held the companies, and not the workers, responsible for the crisis in the industry, and he decided to seize the steel mills.

The steel companies quickly challenged Truman's action in the federal district court in Washington, D.C. Within a few days the case went to the Supreme Court.

The Issue

President Truman's order was a remarkable assertion of Presidential power. The President was not carrying out or acting under a law passed by Congress. No law authorized a President to seize and operate the steel mills. By his order, President Truman was, in effect, making law—a power reserved to Congress by Article 1 of the Constitution.

Had the President overstepped the constitutional boundary that separated the functions of the legislative and executive branches? Or did the Constitution give Truman powers to protect the nation in times of national emergency?

The steel companies argued that the President's order clearly violated the Constitution. They said neither the Constitution nor existing laws gave him authority to seize private property. In addition, Congress had already set up procedures to handle the strike in the Taft-Hartley Act. Thus, they claimed the President had exceeded his constitutional authority.

The President argued that his authority, as chief executive under Article 2 of the Constitution, gave him power to keep steel production going in times of national emergency. In addition, he argued that his power as commander in chief allowed him to take actions necessary to protect the lives of U.S. troops. This power included ensuring a steady flow of steel to produce weapons.

Opinion of the Court

On June 2 the Supreme Court ruled against the President. The Court judged Truman's seizure of the steel mills an unconstitutional exercise of power.

Justice Hugo L. Black, in the majority opinion, said that the President had no power, as either chief executive or commander in chief, to seize private property—even temporarily and during a national emergency. Black said that the power to authorize such an action belonged to Congress, not to the President. Thus, Truman could not seize the steel mills unless Congress passed legislation enabling him to do so. Because Congress had not done so, the seizure was illegal.

Black noted that, in writing the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, Congress had considered letting Presidents seize factories in the event of strikes but had rejected the idea. Thus, by his executive order Truman had attempted to make his own law. Yet the Constitution, Black said, did not permit him to do so. The Constitution limited the President “to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad.”

Dissent

Three justices, all Truman appointees, issued a strong dissent. They argued that during a grave national crisis, such as the Korean War, the Constitution allowed the President to exercise unusual powers. Chief Justice Fred Vinson wrote, “Those who suggest that this is a case involving extraordinary powers should be mindful that these are extraordinary times.” Vinson added that Truman's actions followed the tradition of taking extraordinary actions in times of crisis established by such Presidents as Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt.

Significance

The Youngstown decision required the government to return the steel mills to their owners immediately. Truman promptly complied with the Court's ruling even though he strongly disagreed with it. The steel strike began, and it lasted for 53 days. When it ended, the steel companies agreed to a contract within one cent of the settlement recommended by the government arbitrators. Truman never used the Taft-Hartley Act to intervene. The President did claim that in the summer and fall of 1952 the strike caused some shortages of ammunition.

In this decision, the Court clearly established that there are limits on the powers a President can derive from the Constitution, even during a national emergency. For nearly 20 years Presidential power had been growing through a series of crises including the Great Depression and World War II. The Youngstown decision had the effect of slowing this steady growth.

This case shows how strong Presidents can try to expand the powers of the office. It also demonstrates how the Supreme Court can act to preserve the separation of powers inherent in the U.S. constitutional system.

See also Constitutionalism; Separation of powers; Steel seizure (1952)

Sources

• Robert J. Donovan, “Truman Seizes Steel”, Constitution 2, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 48–57.
• Maeva Marcus, Truman and the Steel Seizure Case: The Limits of Presidential Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
• Alan F. Westin, The Anatomy of a Constitutional Law Case: Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer (New York; Columbia University Press, 1990)

In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 72 S. Ct. 863, 96 L. Ed. 1153 (1952), the Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality of an executive order directing the secretary of commerce to seize possession of the nation's steel mills during a labor dispute, and keep them operating while hostilities continued in the Korean War. Also known as the Steel Seizure Case, Youngstown Sheet & Tube stands for the proposition that the executive branch has no constitutional authority to seize possession of private property, even if it is for public use during times of national emergency, because such authority is vested in the lawmaking powers of Congress.

The case arose from a labor dispute between American steel companies and their employees over the terms of a collective bargaining agreement that was under negotiation in 1951. Employees wanted higher wages, but management protested that such increases could only be met through drastic price hikes. President Harry S. Truman opposed further price hikes because the economy was already suffering from inflation. On the other hand, Truman feared that any disruption in domestic steel production would impede the American war effort in Korea, which was entering its second year, and imperil the safety of U.S. military troops.

When negotiations between labor and management reached an impasse, the employees' representative, United Steelworkers of America, C.I.O., announced its intention to commence a nationwide strike on April 12, 1952, at 12:01 a.m. A few hours before the strike was to begin, Truman issued Executive Order 10340, which commanded the secretary of commerce, Charles Sawyer, to seize most of the nation's steel mills, and keep them running.

In carrying out this order, the secretary directed the presidents of the seized steel companies to serve as operating managers for the U.S. government. Until directed otherwise, each president was to operate his plant in accordance with the rules and regulations prescribed by the secretary. While obeying these orders under protest, the steel companies filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking declaratory relief to invalidate the executive order and injunctive relief to restrain its enforcement.

On April 30, 1952, the district court issued a preliminary injunction immediately restraining the secretary of commerce from continuing the seizure and possession of the steel mills. On that same day, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia stayed the district court's order on the grounds that resolution of such an issue is more appropriate for the U.S. Supreme Court. Granting certiorari three days later, the Supreme Court decided the case on June 12, 1952.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court invalidated the executive order, and affirmed the district court's judgment. Justice Hugo Black delivered the opinion of the Court. Truman's power to issue the order, the Court said, derives, if at all, from an act of Congress, or from the U.S. Constitution. There are no other sources for presidential power, the Court wrote.

The Court found that Truman had not acted pursuant to congressional authority. Prior to issuing the order, Truman had given Congress formal notice of the impending seizure. However, neither house responded. The Court also observed that Congress had considered amending the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, 61 Stat. 136, popularly known as the Taft-Hartley Act, to include a provision authorizing the seizure of steel mills in times of national crisis. Yet Congress rejected the idea. Nor was there any other federal statutory authority, the Court stressed, from which presidential power to seize a private business could be fairly implied.

The Court next turned to the president's constitutional powers. Article II of the Constitution delegates certain enumerated powers to the executive branch. Unlike Article I, which gives Congress a broad grant of authority to make all laws that are "necessary and proper" in exercising its legislative function, Article II limits the authority of the executive branch to narrowly specified powers.

Consistent with Article II, the Court said, a president may recommend the enactment of a particular bill, veto objectionable legislation, and "faithfully execute" laws that have been passed by both houses of Congress. As commander in chief, the president of the United States is vested with ultimate responsibility for the nation's armed forces. However, the Court emphasized, the office of the president has no constitutional authority outside the language contained within the four corners of the Constitution.

Lawyers for the executive branch had argued that the presidency carries with it certain inherent powers that may be reasonably inferred from the express provisions of the Constitution. During times of national emergency, the government's lawyers argued, the president may exercise these inherent powers without violating the Constitution. Since wartime is traditionally considered a time of national emergency, the president's seizure of the steel mills represented a legitimate exercise of his inherent powers.

The Supreme Court disagreed with these arguments. Conceding that a strike could threaten national security by curtailing the production of armaments, the Court said that the commander in chief's authority to prosecute a foreign war does not empower him to seize private property in an effort to resolve a domestic labor dispute. "This is a job for the Nation's lawmakers," Justice Black wrote, "not for its military authorities." Black reminded the executive branch that only Congress can authorize the taking of private property for public use under the Eminent Domain Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Justices Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Harold Burton, Tom Clark, and Robert Jackson each wrote a concurring opinion. Frankfurter suggested that the powers expressly enumerated in Article II may be supplemented by long-standing executive practice, though he said there was no historical precedent for Truman's action in this case. With the exception of Jackson, the other concurring justices elaborated on points made by Justice Black in the Court's opinion.

Jackson's concurring opinion has garnered much attention from constitutional scholars, and is the most frequently cited opinion in Youngstown Sheet & Tube. Jackson articulated an overarching theory of federal executive power in the United States. According to Jackson, there are three tiers of presidential authority. When a president acts in conjunction with Congress, Jackson wrote, executive power is at its zenith because the president may rely on his own authority plus that of the legislative branch. When a president acts contrary to congressional will, executive power is at its nadir because the president must rely solely on his expressly delegated authority minus that of the legislative branch. And when a president acts in an area where Congress has been silent, executive power is uncertain, and may fluctuate depending on the circumstances.

Justice Fred Vinson dissented, joined by Justices Stanley Reed and Sherman Minton. The dissent underscored the importance of steel production to the military effort in Korea. During the two years of hostilities in Southeast Asia, the dissent noted, Congress directed the president to secure the nation's defenses, sometimes doing so in a very general and open-ended manner. Thus, the dissent argued, Truman had received some authority from Congress to take action in the name of national defense and the public interest.

The dissent also relied on history, pointing out that James Madison advocated instilling the executive branch with initiative and vigor. President Abraham Lincoln, the dissent continued, showed initiative during the Civil War by ordering the seizure of all rail and telegraph lines leading to Washington, D.C., even though he lacked congressional approval. In this light, the dissent concluded, Truman's seizure of the steel mills was supported by historical precedent.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube is considered a seminal case regarding the separation of powers among the coordinate branches of the federal government. The U.S. Constitution separates the powers of the federal government among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The constitutional authority of each branch is limited by the express language of the Constitution, and by the powers delegated to the coordinate branches.

Article I gives Congress the power to make the law. Article II gives the president the power to execute or implement the law, while Article III gives the federal judiciary the power to interpret and apply the law. The popular notion of "checks and balances" rests upon this conception of the separation of powers.

Despite the clear separation of constitutional powers, presidents, members of Congress, judges, and laypeople have debated whether the executive branch is vested with additional inherent or implied powers. On one side of the debate are those who believe the presidency enjoys a residue of autocratic power. According to these individuals, such power may be exercised by the president in times of national emergency, and is limited only by the president's good judgment. On the other side of the debate are those who believe the executive branch may not exercise any power that is not explicitly granted by the federal Constitution or federal statute.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube went a long way toward settling this debate. Occasionally presidents still assert claims of executive privilege and executive immunity. In some instances federal courts recognize such claims, but oftentimes they do not. President Richard M. Nixon's unsuccessful attempt to insulate tape recordings made at the White House during the Watergate political scandal from a federal investigation is one notable example of a failed assertion of executive immunity (United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 94 S. Ct. 3090, 41 L. Ed. 2d 1039 [1974]). In many such cases, Youngstown Sheet & Tube has provided the backdrop for judicial analysis of executive authority under constitutional law. Z

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued May 12 – 13, 1952 Decided June 2, 1952
Full case name: Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company, et al. v. Charles Sawyer, Secretary of Commerce Citations: 343 U.S. 579; 72 S. Ct. 863; 96 L. Ed. 1153; 1952 U.S. LEXIS 2625; 21 Lab. Cas. (CCH) P67,008; 1952 Trade Cas. (CCH) P67,293; 62 Ohio L. Abs. 417; 47 Ohio Op. 430; 26 A.L.R.2d 1378; 30 L.R.R.M. 2172 Prior history: Injunction granted to plaintiffs, 103 F. Supp. 569 (D. D.C. 1952); injunctions stayed, 197 F.2d 582 (D.C. Cir. 1952); cert. granted, 343 U.S. 937 (1952)
Holding
The President did not have the inherent authority to seize private property in the absence of either specifically enumerated authority under Article Two of the Constitution or statutory authority conferred on him by Congress. DC District Court affirmed.
Court membership
Chief Justice: Fred M. Vinson Associate Justices: Hugo Black, Stanley Forman Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Robert H. Jackson, Harold Hitz Burton, Tom C. Clark, Sherman Minton
Case opinions
Plurality by: Black Joined by: Frankfurter, Douglas Concurrence by: Frankfurter Concurrence by: Douglas Concurrence by: Jackson Concurrence by: Burton Concurrence by: Clark Dissent by: Vinson Joined by: Reed, Minton
Laws applied
U.S. Const. art. II

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952)^[1] (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.

Justice Black's majority decision was, however, qualified by the separate concurring opinions 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. Note that while a concurrence, Justice Jackson's opinion is used by most legal scholars and Members of Congress to assess Executive power.

Background

The United States found itself in a "police action" in Korea 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 keeping the current operating management of the companies in place to run the plants under federal direction.

Truman might have invoked the national emergency provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act to prevent the union from striking, rather than seizing the plants. 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 announcement on April 8, 1952 that he would take the less risky step of seeking a national emergency injunction under the Taft-Hartley Act instead. The industry was, as events showed, ready to act once he announced the seizure by a national television and radio 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, 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 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 in order to permit the government to resume control of the plants, which would end 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.

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 1812 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.

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.

Concurring opinions

William O. Douglas

Douglas took a similarly absolutist approach to the President's assertion of inherent power to cope with a national emergency, He characterized the seizure as a quintessentially legislative act that the Constitution entrusted to the Congress.

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 H. 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 Justice Vinson dissented; Justices Reed and Minton joined him. His opinion dwelled at some length on the history of presidential seizures; in his 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 Attorney 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 Secretary 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.

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 did not cite Youngstown in any of its 2004 decisions on the scope of executive power to detain United States citizens and foreign nationals in the prosecution of the War on Terror. The court cited Youngstown in the 2006 decision Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, on Guantanamo Bay.

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 343

Further reading

• Marcus, Maeva. Truman and the Steel Seizure Case: The Limits of Presidential Power. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977. ISBN 0-231-04126-8.

External link

• ^ 343 U.S. 579 (Text of the opinion on Findlaw.com.)

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