Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer,
343 U.S. 579 (1952)
When the steel industry's union gave notice of a nationwide strike, President Truman issued an executive order seizing the steel mills. Without any statutory power granted by Congress, the only reason presented was the avoidance of national catastrophe and imperiling of the national defense.
JUDGES: BLACK, J., delivered the opinion of the Court in which FRANKFURTER, DOUGLAS, JACKSON, and BURTON joined. FRANKFURTER, DOUGLAS, JACKSON, and BURTON, JJ., each filed separate concurring opinions. CLARK, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. VINSON, J., filed a dissenting opinion in which REED and MINTON, JJ., joined.
OPINION: MR. JUSTICE BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.
We are asked to decide whether the President was acting within his constitutional power when he issued an order directing the Secretary of Commerce to take possession of and operate most of the Nation's steel mills. ...
The President's power, if any, to issue the order must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself. There is no statute that expressly authorizes the President to take possession of property as he did here. Nor is there any act of Congress to which our attention has been directed from which such a power can fairly be implied. ...
It is clear that if the President had authority to issue the order he did, it must be found in some provision of the Constitution. And it is not claimed that express constitutional language grants this power to the President. The contention is that presidential power should be implied from the aggregate of his powers under the Constitution. Particular reliance is placed on provisions in Article II which say that "The executive Power shall be vested in a President . . ."; that "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed"; and that he "shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States."
The order cannot properly be sustained as an exercise of the President's military power as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. ... Even though "theater of war" be an expanding concept, we cannot with faithfulness to our constitutional system hold that the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces has the ultimate power as such to take possession of private property in order to keep labor disputes from stopping production. ...
Nor can the seizure order be sustained because of the several constitutional provisions that grant executive power to the President. In the framework of our Constitution, the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker. ...
The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times. It would do no good to recall the historical events, the fears of power and the hopes for freedom that lay behind their choice. Such a review would but confirm our holding that this seizure order cannot stand.
The judgment of the District Court is
Affirmed.
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