Final Flashcards
McCulloch v. Maryland: Necessary and Proper Clause Test
Do we have a rational basis to think that the chosen means are useful and convenient for the execution of an enumerated power?
Enumeration and Supremacy
Federal government is only authorized to act pursuant to its enumerated powers, and when it acts pursuant to that authority, its actions are supreme and trump all other actors’ claims
Chae Chan Ping
-Court affirmed the denial of entry of a Chinese laborer—government as part of the sovereign powers of the Constitution had the right to exclude Chinese laborers. The Court held that treaties were of no greater legal obligation than the act of congress
Fong Yue Ting v. United States
-Power to exclude or expel noncitizens is vested in the political departments of the national government and is to be regulated by treaty or an act of congress
Wickard v. Filburn
-Filburn owned a farm where he grew wheat for livestock
-Congress was looking to safeguard the wheat market as a whole
-Court adopts aggregation principle—his situation is taken with everyone else’s would lead to an effect on the entire economic system
-Overruling of the directness approach
Lopez: Commerce Clause Test
- Channels of Interstate Commerce? — “in IC”
- Instrumentalities/Persons/Things in Interstate Commerce? — “in IC”
- Economic Activity with substantial relation to Interstate Commerce? — “affects IC”
Gonzales v. Raich: Broadening of Economic Activity for CC
-The court adopted a meaning that can apply to almost anything—production, distribution, consumption of commodities, anything which some market exists in the world
-Does not require that the activity itself be economic to qualify under the effects analysis
NFIB v. Sebelius: CC
The legislation was unconstitutional because Congress cannot use that power to require people to buy health insurance
-Regulation power does not include the power to create a market
-Makes a distinction between activity and inactivity
INS v. Chadha
Step 1: Is the power enumerated?
Step 2: If it is not explicitly enumerated but alters the rights, duties, and relations of a person, then Congress is required to go through bicameral and presentment
Legislative Power (derived from INS v. Chadha)
Exists where it alters the rights, duties, and relations of persons
Legislative power requires bicameralism, presentment, and 2/3 majority
Jackson’s Youngstown Rules
- When the president acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum
Includes: Presidential power + Congressional Delegated power
In these circumstances he can personify the federal sovereignty
If his actions are found to be unconstitutional, it is because the federal gov’t as a whole did not have the power - When the president acts in the absence of congressional grant or denial, he can only rely upon his own independent powers—there is a zone in which Congress has concurrent authority or in which the distribution is uncertain
Tests of power depend on imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than abstract theories of law - When the president takes measures incompatible with expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest and he can only rely upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress
Courts can sustain exclusive presidential control by disabling Congress from acting upon the subject
Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution because it threatens the equilibrium of the constitutional system
Dames & Moore v. Regan
-Even without explicit congressional authorization, there may be implicit authorization
Medellín v. Texas
-Signed protocol of the Vienna Convention did not make the treaty self-executing and the treaty is not binding upon state courts until it is enacted into law by Congress
Zivotofsky v. Kerry
-Recognition power is embodied in the reception clause which says the president should receive ambassadors and other public ministers
-Congress gets to decide the relations between the nations that the presidents recognizes
-Once you start at the point where there is a presumption that the power belongs to the president, you have to look at the equivocal history and conclude that it doesn’t suggest there has been sufficient acquiescence by the president to establish that baseline
Prize Cases
-Gave authority to impose a blockade without congress declaring a war
-Militia acts authorize some use of force but not everything one would want to do in a war
-President has discretion to decide when to meet force with force
