One of the most important jobs of the President of the United States is his constitutional requirement to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." So not only is a president supposed to shape policy, they are meant to ensure existing laws and the Constitution are upheld. In a way, this makes the president a top-level law enforcer. But, as we outline below, it's not always that simple.
Article II of the Constitution outlines the powers and responsibilities of the President of the United States. It names the president as the head of the Executive Branch as well as Commander-In-Chief of the Army and Navy. It requires the president to provide updates on how the country is doing - known as the State of the Union. Finally, it provides that the president and vice president should be removed from office through impeachment if they commit "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
The main focus of Article II is the Executive Branch - namely, the office of the President of the United States.
Article II names the president as the Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces, gives them the power to make treaties, and puts them in charge of appointing federal officers.
Known as the Treaty and Appointments power, this part of the Constitution gives the president and Congress the power to enter into treaties. However, historically the negotiation of treaties has been left to the president alone.
Not exactly. The Constitution says that the president shall "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," not that he must personally enforce the law. Generally, the Attorney General of the United States is considered the nation's chief law enforcement officer.
The Constitution does not say that the President shall execute the laws, but that ''he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed,'' i.e., by others, who are commonly, but not always with strict accuracy, termed his subordinates. What powers are implied from this duty? In this connection, five categories of executive power should be distinguished: first, there is that executive power which the Constitution confers directly upon the President by the opening clause of article II and, in more specific terms, by succeeding clauses of the same article; secondly, there is the sum total of the powers which acts of Congress at any particular time confer upon the President; thirdly, there is the sum total of discretionary powers which acts of Congress at any particular time confer upon heads of departments and other executive (''administrative'') agencies of the National Government; fourthly, there is the power which stems from the duty to enforce the criminal statutes of the United States; finally, there are so-called ''ministerial duties'' which admit of no discretion as to the occasion or the manner of their discharge. Three principal questions arise: first, how does the President exercise the powers which the Constitution or the statutes confer upon him; second, in what relation does he stand by virtue of the ''take care'' clause to the powers of other executive or administrative agencies; third, in what relation does he stand to the enforcement of the criminal laws of the United States? 613
Whereas the British monarch is constitutionally under the necessity of acting always through agents if his acts are to receive legal recognition, the President is presumed to exercise certain of his constitutional powers personally. In the words of an opinion by Attorney General Cushing in 1855: ''It may be presumed that he, the man discharging the presidential office, and he alone, grants reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States. . . . So he, and he alone, is the supreme commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States when called into the actual service of the United States. That is a power constitutionally inherent in the person of the President. No act of Congress, no act even of the President himself, can, by constitutional possibility, authorize or create any military officer not subordinate to the President.'' 614 Moreover, the obligation to act personally may be sometimes enlarged by statute, as, for example, by the act organizing the President with other designated officials into ''an Establishment by name of the Smithsonian Institute.'' 615 Here, says the Attorney General, ''the President's name of office is designatio personae.'' He was also of opinion that expenditures from the ''secret service'' fund, in order to be valid, must be vouched for by the President personally. 616 On like grounds the Supreme Court once held void a decree of a court martial, because, though it has been confirmed by the Secretary of War, it was not specifically stated to have received the sanction of the President as required by the 65th Article of War. 617 This case has, however, been virtually overruled, and at any rate such cases are exceptional. 618
The general rule, as stated by the Court, is that when any duty is cast by law upon the President, it may be exercised by him through the head of the appropriate department, whose acts, if performed within the law, thus become the President's acts. 619 Williams v. United States 620 involved an act of Congress, which prohibited the advance of public money in any case whatever to disbursing officers of the United States, except under special direction by the President. 621 The Supreme Court held that the act did not require the personal performance by the President of this duty. Such a practice, said the Court, if it were possible, would absorb the duties of the various departments of the government in the personal acts of one chief executive officer, and be fraught with mischief to the public service. The President's duty in general requires his superintendence of the administration; yet he cannot be required to become the administrative officer of every department and bureau, or to perform in person the numerous details incident to services which, nevertheless, he is, in a correct sense, by the Constitution and laws required and expected to perform. 622 As a matter of administrative practice, in fact, most orders and instructions emanating from the heads of the departments, even though in pursuance of powers conferred by statute on the President, do not even refer to the President. 623
In his Third Annual Message to Congress, President Jefferson established the first faint outline of what has been in recent years a major controversy. Reporting that $50,000 in funds which Congress had appropriated for fifteen gunboats on the Mississippi remained unexpended, the President stated that a ''favorable and peaceful turn of affairs on the Mississippi rendered an immediate execution of the law unnecessary. . . .'' But he was not refusing to expend the money, only de laying action to obtain improved gunboats; a year later, he told Congress that the money was being spent and gunboats were being obtained. 624 A few other instances of deferrals or refusals to spend occurred in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, but it was only with the Administration of President Franklin Roosevelt that a President refused to spend moneys for the purposes appropriated. Succeeding Presidents expanded upon these precedents, and in the Nixon Administration a well-formulated plan of impoundments was executed in order to reduce public spending and to negate programs established by congressional legislation. 625
Impoundment 626 was defended by Administration spokesmen as being a power derived from the President's executive powers and particularly from his obligation to see to the faithful execution of the laws, i.e., his discretion in the manner of execution. The President, the argument went, is responsible for deciding when two conflicting goals of Congress can be harmonized and when one must give way, when, for example, congressional desire to spend certain moneys must yield to congressional wishes to see price and wage stability. In some respects, impoundment was said or implied to flow from certain inherent executive powers that repose in any President. Finally, statutory support was sought; certain laws were said to confer discretion to withhold spending, and it was argued that congressional spending programs are discretionary rather than mandatory. 627
On the other hand, it was argued that Congress' powers under Article I, Sec. 8, were fully adequate to support its decision to authorize certain programs, to determine the amount of funds to be spent on them, and to mandate the Executive to execute the laws. Permitting the President to impound appropriated funds allowed him the power of item veto which he does not have and denies Congress the opportunity to override his veto of bills enacted by Congress. In particular, the power of Congress to compel the President to spend appropriated moneys was said to derive from Congress' power ''to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution'' the enumerated powers of Congress and ''all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or officer thereof.'' 628
The President's decision to impound large amounts of appropriated funds led to two approaches to curtail the power. First, many persons and organizations, with a reasonable expectation of receipt of the impounded funds upon their release, brought large numbers of suits; with a few exceptions, these suits resulted in decisions denying the President either constitutional or statutory power to decline to spend or obligate funds, and the Supreme Court, presented with only statutory arguments by the Administration, held that no discretion existed under the particular statute to withhold allotments of funds to the States. 629 Second, Congress in the course of revising its own manner of appropriating funds in accordance with budgetary responsibility provided for mandatory reporting of impoundments to Congress, for congressional disapproval of impoundments, and for court actions by the Comptroller General to compel spending or obligation of funds. 630
Generally speaking, the law recognized two types of impoundments: ''routine'' or ''programmatic'' reservations of budget authority to provide for the inevitable contingencies that arise in administering congressionally-funded programs and ''policy'' decisions that are ordinarily intended to advance the broader fiscal or other policy objectives of the executive branch contrary to congressional wishes in appropriating funds in the first place.
Routine reservations were to come under the terms of a revised Anti-Deficiency Act. 631 Prior to its amendment, this law had per mitted the President to ''apportion'' funds ''to provide for contingencies, or to effect savings whenever savings are made possible by or through changes in requirements, greater efficiency of operations, or other developments subsequent to the date on which such appropriation was made available.'' President Nixon had relied on this ''other developments'' language as authorization to impound, for what in essence were policy reasons. 632 Congress deleted the controverted clause and retained the other language to authorize reservations to maintain funds for contingencies and to effect savings made possible in carrying out the program; it added a clause permitting reserves ''as specifically provided by law.'' 633
''Policy'' impoundments were to be reported to Congress by the President as permanent rescissions and, perhaps, as temporary deferrals. 634 Rescissions are merely recommendations or proposals of the President and must be authorized by a bill or joint resolution, or, after 45 days from the presidential message, the funds must be made available for obligation. 635 Temporary deferrals of budget authority for less than a full fiscal year, as provided in the 1974 law, were to be effective unless either the House of Representatives or the Senate passed a resolution of disapproval. 636 With the decision in INS v. Chadha, 637 voiding as unconstitutional the one-House legislative veto, it was evident that the veto provision in the deferral section of the Impoundment Control Act was no longer viable. An Administration effort to utilize the section, minus the veto device, was thwarted by court action, in which, applying established severability analysis, the court held that Congress would not have enacted the deferral provision in the absence of power to police its exercise through the veto. 638 Thus, the entire deferral section was inoperative. Congress, in 1987, enacted a more restricted authority, limited to deferrals only for those purposes set out in the Anti- Deficiency Act. 639
With passage of the Act, the constitutional issues faded into the background; Presidents regularly reported rescission proposals, and Congress responded by enacted its own rescissions, usually topping the Presidents'. The entire field was, of course, confounded by the application of the other part of the 1974 law, the Budget Act, which restructured how budgets were received and acted on in Congress, and by the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985. 640 This latter law was designed as a deficit-reduction forcing mechanism, so that unless President and Congress cooperates each year to reduce the deficit by prescribed amounts, a ''sequestration'' order would reduce funds down to a mandated figure. 641 Dissatisfaction with the amount of deficit reduction continues to stimulate discussion of other means, such as ''expedited'' rescission and the line-item veto, many of which may raise some constitutional issues.
Suppose, that the law casts a duty upon a head of department eo nomine, does the President thereupon become entitled by virtue of his duty to ''take care that the laws be faithfully executed,'' to substitute his own judgment for that of the principal officer regarding the discharge of such duty? In the debate in the House in 1789 on the location of the removal power, Madison argued that it ought to be attributed to the President alone because it was ''the intention of the Constitution, expressed especially in the faithful execution clause, that the first magistrate should be responsible for the executive department,'' and this responsibility, he held, carried with it the power to ''inspect and control'' the conduct of subordinate executive officers. ''Vest,'' said he, ''the power [of removal] in the Senate jointly with the President, and you abolish at once the great principle of unity and responsibility in the executive department, which was intended for the security of liberty and the public good.'' 642
But this was said with respect to the office of the Secretary of State, and when shortly afterward the question arose as to the power of Congress to regulate the tenure of the Comptroller of the Treasury, Madison assumed a very different attitude, conceding in effect that this office was to be an arm of certain of Congress' own powers and should therefore be protected against the removal power. 643 And in Marbury v. Madison, 644 Chief Justice Marshall traced a parallel distinction between the duties of the Secretary of State under the original act which had created a ''Department of Foreign Affairs'' and those which had been added by the later act changing the designation of the department to its present one. The former were, he pointed out, entirely in the ''political field,'' and hence for their discharge the Secretary was left responsible absolutely to the President. The latter, on the other hand, were exclusively of statutory origin and sprang from the powers of Congress. For these, therefore, the Secretary was ''an officer of the law'' and ''amenable to the law for his conduct.'' 645
An opinion rendered by Attorney General Wirt in 1823 asserted the proposition that the President's duty under the ''take care'' clause required of him scarcely more than that he should bring a criminally negligent official to book for his derelictions, either by removing him or by setting in motion against him the processes of impeachment or of criminal prosecutions. 646 The opinion entirely overlooked the important question of the location of the power to interpret the law which is inevitably involved in any effort to enforce it. The diametrically opposed theory that Congress is unable to vest any head of an executive department, even within the field of Congress' specifically delegated powers, with any legal discretion which the President is not entitled to control was first asserted in unambiguous terms in President Jackson's Protest Message of April 15, 1834, 647 defending his removal of Duane as Secretary of the Treasury, because of the latter's refusal to remove the deposits from the Bank of the United States. Here it is asserted ''that the entire executive power is vested in the President;'' that the power to remove those officers who are to aid him in the execution of the laws is an incident of that power; that the Secretary of the Treasury was such an officer; that the custody of the public property and money was an executive function exercised through the Secretary of the Treasury and his subordinates; that in the performance of these duties the Secretary was subject to the supervision and control of the President; and finally that the act establishing the Bank of the United States ''did not, as it could not change the relation between the President and Secretary--did not release the former from his obligation to see the law faithfully executed nor the latter from the President's supervision and control.'' 648 In short, the President's removal power, in this case unqualified, was the sanction provided by the Constitution for his power and duty to control his ''subordinates'' in all their official actions of public consequence.
Four years late the case of Kendall v. United States ex rel. Stokes, 649 was decided. The United States owed one Stokes money, and when Postmaster General Kendall, at Jackson's instigation, refused to pay it, Congress passed a special act ordering payment. Kendall, however, still proved noncompliant, whereupon Stokes sought and obtained a mandamus in the United States circuit court for the District of Columbia, and on appeal this decision was affirmed by the Supreme Court. While Kendall, like Marbury v. Madison, involved the question of the responsibility of a head of a department for the performance of a ministerial duty, the discussion by counsel before the Court and the Court's own opinion covered the entire subject of the relation of the President to his subordinates in the performance by them of statutory duties. The lower court had asserted that the duty of the President under the faithful execution clause gave him no other control over the officer than to see that he acts honestly, with proper motives, but no power to construe the law and see that the executive action conforms to it. Counsel for Kendall attacked this position vigorously, relying largely upon statements by Hamilton, Marshall, James Wilson, and Story having to do with the President's power in the field of foreign relations.
The Court rejected the implication with emphasis. There are, it pointed out, ''certain political duties imposed upon many officers in the executive department, the discharge of which is under the direction of the President. But it would be an alarming doctrine, that Congress cannot impose upon any executive officer any duty they may think proper, which is not repugnant to any rights secured and protected by the Constitution; and in such cases the duty and responsibility grow out of and are subject to the control of the law, and not to the direction of the President. And this is emphatically the case, where the duty enjoined is of a mere ministerial character.'' 650 In short, the Court recognized the underlying ques tion of the case to be whether the President's duty to ''take care that the laws be faithfully executed'' made it constitutionally impossible for Congress ever to entrust the construction of its statutes to anybody but the President, and it answered this in the negative.
How does this issue stand today? The answer to this question, so far as there is one, is to be sought in a comparison of the Court's decision in the Myers case, on the one hand, and its decision in the Morrison case, on the other. 651 The first decision is still valid to support the President's right to remove, and hence to control the decisions of, all officials through whom he exercises the great political powers which he derives from the Constitution and also of many but not all officials--usually heads of departments--through whom he exercises powers conferred upon him by statute. Morrison, however, recasts Myers to be about the constitutional inability of Congress to participate in removal decisions. It permits Congress to limit the removal power of the President, and those acting for him, by imposition of a ''good cause'' standard, subject to a balancing test. That is, the Court now regards the critical issue not as what officials do, whether they perform ''purely executive'' functions or ''quasi'' legislative or judicial functions, though the duties and functions must be considered. Rather, the Courts must ''ensure that Congress does not interfere with the President's exercise of the 'executive power'' and his constitutionally appointed duty to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed' under Article II.'' 652 Thus, the Court continued, Myers was correct in its holding and in its suggestion that there are some executive officials who must be removable by the President if he is to perform his duties. 653 On the other hand, Congress may believe that it is necessary to protect the tenure of some officials, and if it has good reasons not limited to invasion of presidential prerogatives, it will be sustained, provided the removal restrictions are not of such a nature as to impede the President's ability to perform his constitutional duties. 654 The officer in Morrison, the independent counsel, had investigative and prosecutorial functions, purely executive ones, but there were good reasons for Congress to secure her tenure and no showing that the restriction ''unduly trammels'' presidential powers. 655
The ''bright-line'' rule previously observed no longer holds. Now, Congress has a great deal more leeway in regulating execu tive officials, but it must articulate its reasons carefully and observe the fuzzy lines set by the Court.
This matter also came to a head in ''the reign of Andrew Jackson,'' preceding, and indeed foreshadowing, the Duane episode by some months. ''At that epoch,'' Wyman relates in his Principles of Administrative Law, ''the first amendment of the doctrine of centralism in its entirety was set forth in an obscure opinion upon an unimportant matter--The Jewels of the Princess of Orange, 2 Opin. 482 (1831). These jewels . . . were stolen from the Princess by one Polari and were seized by the officers of the United States Customs in the hands of the thief. Representations were made to the President of the United States by the Minister of the Netherlands of the facts in the matter, which were followed by a request for return of the jewels. In the meantime the District Attorney was prosecuting condemnation proceedings in behalf of the United States which he showed no disposition to abandon. The President felt himself in a dilemma, whether if it was by statute the duty of the District Attorney to prosecute or not, the President could interfere and direct whether to proceed or not. The opinion was written by Taney, then Attorney General; it is full of pertinent illustrations as to the necessity in an administration of full power in the chief executive as the concomitant of his full responsibility. It concludes: If it should be said that, the District Attorney having the power to discontinue the prosecution, there is no necessity for inferring a right in the President to direct him to exercise it--I answer that the direction of the President is not required to communicate any new authority to the District Attorney, but to direct him in the execution of a power he is admitted to possess. The most valuable and proper measure may often be for the President to order the District Attorney to discontinue prosecution. The District Attorney might refuse to obey the President's order; and if he did refuse, the prosecution, while he remained in office, would still go on; because the President himself could give no order to the court or to the clerk to make any particular entry. He could only act through his subordinate officer, the District Attorney, who is responsible to him and who holds his office at his pleasure. And if that officer still continues a prosecution which the President is satisfied ought not to continue, the removal of the disobedient officer and the substitution of one more worthy in his place would enable the President through him faithfully to execute the law. And it is for this among other reasons that the power of removing the District Attorney resides in the President.'' 656
The power accruing to the President from his function of law interpretation preparatory to law enforcement is daily illustrated in relation to such statutes as the Anti-Trust Acts, the Taft-Hartley Act, the Internal Security Act, and many lesser statutes. Nor is this the whole story. Not only do all presidential regulations and orders based on statutes that vest power in him or on his own constitutional powers have the force of law, provided they do not transgress the Court's reading of such statutes or of the Constitution, 657 but he sometimes makes law in a more special sense. In the famous Neagle case, 658 an order of the Attorney General to a United States marshal to protect a Justice of the Supreme Court whose life has been threatened by a suitor was attributed to the President and held to be ''a law of the United States'' in the sense of Sec. 753 of the Revised Statutes, and as such to afford basis for a writ of habeas corpus transferring the marshal, who had killed the attacker, from state to national custody. Speaking for the Court, Justice Miller inquired: ''Is this duty [the duty of the President to take care that the laws be faithfully executed] limited to the enforcement of acts of Congress or of treaties of the United States according to their express terms, or does it include the rights, duties and obligations growing out of the Constitution itself, our international relations, and all the protection implied by the nature of the government under the Constitution?'' 659 Obviously, an affirmative answer is assumed to the second branch of this inquiry, an assumption which is borne out by numerous precedents. And in United States v. Midwest Oil Company, 660 it was ruled that the President had, by dint of repeated assertion of it from an early date, acquired the right to withdraw, via the Land Department, public lands, both mineral and nonmineral, from private acquisition, Congress having never repudiated the practice.
''Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.
''The President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both . . . shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it--(1) so hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law . . . .'' 661
These quoted provisions of the United States Code consolidate a course of legislation which began at the time of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1792. 662 In Martin v. Mott, 663 which arose out of the War of 1812, it was held that the authority to decide whether the exigency had arisen belonged exclusively to the President. 664 Even before that time, Jefferson had, in 1808, in the course of his efforts to enforce the Embargo Acts, issued a proclamation ordering ''all officers having authority, civil or military, who shall be found in the vicinity'' of an unruly combination, to aid and assist ''by all means in their power, by force of arms or otherwise'' the suppression of such combination. 665 Forty-six years later, Attorney General Cushing advised President Pierce that in enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, marshals of the United States had authority when opposed by unlawful combinations to summon to their aid not only bystanders and citizens generally, but armed forces within their precincts, both state militia and United States officers, soldiers, sailors, and marines, 666 a doctrine that Pierce himself improved upon two years later by asserting, with reference to the civil war then raging in Kansas, that it lay within his obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed to place the forces of the United States in Kansas at the disposal of the marshal there, to be used as a portion of the posse comitatus. Lincoln's call of April 15, 1861, for 75,000 volunteers was, on the other hand, a fresh invocation, though of course on a vastly magnified scale, of Jefferson's conception of a posse comitatus subject to presidential call. 667 The provisions above extracted from the United States Code ratified this conception as regards the state militias and the national forces.
See Article I, Sec. 9.
The question of executive power in the presence of civil disorder is dealt with in modern terms in Moyer v. Peabody, 668 to which the Debs case 669 may be regarded as an addendum. Moyer, a labor leader, brought suit against Peabody for having ordered his arrest during a labor dispute which occurred while Peabody was governor of Colorado. Speaking for a unanimous Court, one Justice being absent, Justice Holmes said: ''Of course the plaintiff's position is that he has been deprived of his liberty without due process of law. But it is familiar that what is due process of law depends on circumstances. It varies with the subject matter and the necessities of the situation. . . . The facts that we are to assume are that a state of insurrection existed and that the Governor, without sufficient reason but in good faith, in the course of putting the insurrection down held the plaintiff until he thought that he safely could release him.
''. . . In such a situation we must assume that he had a right under the state constitution and laws to call out troops, as was held by the Supreme Court of the State. . . . That means that he shall make the ordinary use of the soldiers to that end; that he may kill persons who resist and, of course, that he may use the milder measure of seizing the bodies of those whom he considers to stand in the way of restoring peace. Such arrests are not necessarily for punishment, but are by way of precaution to prevent the exercise of hostile power. So long as such arrests are made in good faith and in the honest belief that they are needed in order to head the insurrection off, the Governor is the final judge and cannot be subjected to an action after he is out of office on the ground for his belief.
''. . . When it comes to a decision by the head of the State upon a matter involving its life, the ordinary rights of individuals must yield to what he deems the necessities of the moment. Public danger warrants the substitution of executive process for judicial process.'' 670
The Debs case of 1895 arose out of a railway strike which had caused the President to dispatch troops to Chicago the previous year. Coincidentally with this move, the United States district attorney stationed there, acting upon orders from Washington, obtained an injunction from the United States circuit court forbidding the strike because of its interference with the mails and with interstate commerce. The question before the Supreme Court was whether this injunction, for violation of which Debs had been jailed for contempt of court, had been granted with jurisdiction. Conceding, in effect, that there was no statutory warrant for the injunction, the Court nevertheless validated it on the ground that the Government was entitled thus to protect its property in the mails, and on a much broader ground which is stated in the following passage of Justice Brewer's opinion for the Court: ''Every government, entrusted, by the very terms of its being, with powers and duties to be exercised and discharged for the general welfare, has a right to apply to its own courts for any proper assistance in the exercise of the one and the discharge of the other. . . . While it is not the province of the Government to interfere in any mere matter of private controversy between individuals, or to use its granted powers to enforce the rights of one against another, yet, whenever the wrongs complained of are such as affect the public at large, and are in respect of matters which by the Constitution are entrusted to the care of the Nation and concerning which the Nation owes the duty to all the citizens of securing to them their common rights, then the mere fact that the Government has no pecuniary interest in the controversy is not sufficient to exclude it from the courts, or prevent it from taking measures therein to fully discharge those constitutional duties.'' 671
Insofar as the use of injunctive relief in labor disputes is concerned, enactment of the Norris-LaGuardia Act 672 placed substantial restrictions on the power of federal courts to issue injunctions in such situations. Though, in United States v. UMW, 673 the Court held that the Norris-LaGuardia Act did not apply where the Government brought suit as operator of mines, language in the opinion appeared to go a good way toward repudiating the present viability of Debs, though more in terms of congressional limitations than of revised judicial opinion. 674 It should be noted that in 1947 Congress authorized the President to seek injunctive relief in ''national emergency'' labor disputes, which would seem to imply absence of authority to act in situations not meeting the statutory definition. 675
With regard to the power of the President to seek injunctive relief in other situations without statutory authority, there is no clear precedent. In New York Times Co. v. United States, 676 the Government sought to enjoin two newspapers from publishing classified material given to them by a dissident former governmental employee. Though the Supreme Court rejected the Government's claim, five of the six majority Justices relied on First Amendment grounds, apparently assuming basic power to bring the action in the first place, and three dissenters were willing to uphold the constitutionality of the Government's action and its basic power on the premise that the President was authorized to protect the secrecy of governmental documents. Only one Justice denied expressly that power was lacking altogether to sue. 677
[Footnote 613] Notice that in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 2142-2146 (1992), the Court purported to draw from the ''take care'' clause the principle that Congress could not authorize citizens with only generalized grievances to sue to compel governmental compliance with the law, inasmuch as permitting that would be ''to permit Congress to transfer from the President to the courts the Chief Executive's most important constitutional duty, to 'take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.''' Id., 2145.
[Footnote 614] 7 Ops. Atty. Gen. 453, 464-465 (1855).
[Footnote 615] 9 Stat. 102 (1846), 20 U.S.C. Sec. 41.
[Footnote 616] Cf. 2 Stat. 78. The provision has long since dropped out of the statute book.
[Footnote 617] Runkle v. United States, 122 U.S. 543 (1887).
[Footnote 618] Cf. In re Chapman, 166 U.S. 661, 670 -671 (1897), where it was held that presumptions in favor of official action ''preclude collateral attack on the sentences of courts-martial.'' See also United States v. Fletcher, 148 U.S. 84, 88 -89 (1893); Bishop v. United States, 197 U.S. 334, 341 -342 (1905), both of which in effect repudiate Runkle.
[Footnote 619] The President, in the exercise of his executive power under the Constitution, ''speaks and acts through the heads of the several departments in relation to subjects which appertain to their respective duties.'' The heads of the departments are his authorized assistants in the performance of his executive duties, and their official acts, promulgated in the regular course of business, are presumptively his acts. Wilcox v. McConnel, 38 U.S. (13 Pet.) 498, 513 (1839). See also United States v. Eliason, 41 U.S. (16 Pet.) 291 (1842); Williams v. United States, 42 U.S. (1 How.) 290, 297 (1843); United States v. Jones, 59 U.S. (18 How.) 92, 95 (1856); The Confiscation Cases, 87 U.S. (20 Wall.) 92 (1874); United States v. Farden, 99 U.S. 10 (1879); Wolsey v. Chapman, 101 U.S. 755 (1880).
[Footnote 620] 42 U.S. (1 How.) 290 (1843).
[Footnote 621] 3 Stat. 723 (1823), now covered in 31 U.S.C. Sec. 3324.
[Footnote 622] Id., 1 How. (42 U.S.), 297-298.
[Footnote 623] 38 Ops. Atty. Gen. 457, 458 (1936). And, of course, if the President exercises his duty through subordinates, he must appoint them or appoint the officers who appoint them, Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 109 -143 (1976), and he must have the power to discharge those officers in the Executive Branch, Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), although the Court has now greatly qualified Myers to permit congressional limits on the removal of some officers. Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988).
[Footnote 624] 1 J. Richardson, op. cit., n.42, 348, 360.
[Footnote 625] History and law is much discussed in Executive Impoundment of Appropriated Funds, Hearings before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, 92d Congress, 1st sess. (1971); Impoundment of Appropriated Funds by the President, Hearings before the Senate Government Operations Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Impoundment of Funds, 93d Congress, 1st sess. (1973). The most thorough study of the legal and constitutional issues, informed through historical analysis, is Abascal & Kramer, Presidential Impoundment Part I: Historical Genesis and Constitutional Framework, 62 Geo. L. J. 1549 (1974); Abascal & Kramer, Presidential Impoundment Part II: Judicial and Legislative Response, 63 id. 149 (1974). See generally L. Fisher, Presidential Spending Power (Princeton: 1975).
[Footnote 626] There is no satisfactory definition of impoundment. Legislation enacted by Congress uses the phrase ''deferral of budget authority'' which is defined to include: ''(A) withholding or delaying the obligation or expenditure of budget authority (whether by establishing reserves or otherwise) provided for projects or activities; or (B) any other type of Executive action or inaction which effectively precludes the obligation or expenditure of budget authority, including authority to obligate by contract in advance of appropriations as specifically authorized by law.'' 2 U.S.C. Sec. 682(1).
[Footnote 627] Impoundment of Appropriated Funds by the President, Hearings before the Senate Government Operations Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Impoundment of Funds, 93d Congress, 1st sess. (1973), 358 (then-Deputy Attorney General Sneed).
[Footnote 628] Id., 1-6 (Senator Ervin). Of course, it was long ago established that Congress could direct the expenditure of at least some moneys from the Treasury, even over the opposition of the President. Kendall v. United States ex rel. Stokes, 37 U.S. (12 Pet.) 524 (1838).
[Footnote 629] Train v. City of New York, 420 U.S. 35 (1975); Train v. Campaign Clean Water, 420 U.S. 136 (1975). See also State Highway Comm. of Missouri v. Volpe, 479 F.2d 1099 (8th Cir., 1973); Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Lynn, 501 F.2d 848 (D.C.Cir., 1974) (the latter case finding statutory discretion not to spend).
[Footnote 630] Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, P.L. 93- 344, title X, Sec. Sec. 1001-1017, 88 Stat. 332 (1974), as amended, 2 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 681-688.
[Footnote 631] Originally passed as the Act of Feb. 27, 1906, ch. 510, Sec. 3, 34 Stat. 27, 48. The provisions as described in the text were added in the General Appropriations Act of 1951, ch. 896, Sec. 1211(c)(2), 64 Stat. 595, 765. The amendments made by the Impoundment Control Act, were Sec. 1002, 88 Stat. 332, 31 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 1341, 1512. On the Anti-Deficiency Act generally, see Stith, Congress' Power of the Purse, 97 Yale L. J. 1343, 1370-1377 (1988).
[Footnote 632] L. Fisher, Presidential Spending Power (Princeton: 1975), 154-157.
[Footnote 633] 31 U.S.C. Sec. 1512(c)(1) (present version). Congressional intent was to prohibit the use of apportionment as an instrument of policymaking. 120 Cong. Rec. 7658 (1974) (Senator Muskie); id., 20472- 20473 (Senators Ervin and McClellan).
[Footnote 634] Sec. Sec. 1011(1), 1012, 1013, 88 Stat. 333-334, 2 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 628(1), 683, 684.
[Footnote 635] 2 U.S.C. Sec. 683.
[Footnote 636] Sec. 1013, 88 Stat. 334. Because the Act was a compromise between the House of Representatives and the Senate, numerous questions were left unresolved; one important one was whether the President could use the deferral avenue as a means of effectuating policy impoundments or whether rescission proposals were the sole means. The subsequent events described in the text mooted that argument.
[Footnote 637] 462 U.S. 919 (1983).
[Footnote 638] City of New Haven v. United States, 809 F.2d 900 (D.C.Cir. 1987).
[Footnote 639] P. L. 100-119, title II, Sec. 206(a), 101 Stat. 785, 2 U.S.C. Sec. 684.
[Footnote 640] P. L. 99-177, 99 Stat. 1037, codified as amended in titles 2, 31, and 42 U.S.C., with the relevant portions to this discussion at 2 U.S.C. Sec. 901 et seq.
[Footnote 641] See Stith, Rewriting the Fiscal Constitution: The Case of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, 76 Calif. L. Rev. 593 (1988).
[Footnote 642] 1 Annals of Cong. 495, 499 (1789).
[Footnote 643] Id., 611-612.
[Footnote 644] 5 U.S. (1 Cr.) 137 (1803).
[Footnote 645] Id., 165-166.
[Footnote 646] 1 Ops. Atty. Gen. 624 (1823).
[Footnote 647] 3 J. Richardson, op. cit., n.42, 1288.
[Footnote 648] Id., 1304.
[Footnote 649] 37 U.S. (12 Pet.) 524 (1838).
[Footnote 650] Id., 610.
[Footnote 651] Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926); Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988).
[Footnote 652] Id., 689-690.
[Footnote 653] Id., 690-691.
[Footnote 654] Id., 691.
[Footnote 655] Id., 691-692.
[Footnote 656] B. Wyman, The Principles of the Administrative Law Governing the Relations of Public Officers (St. Paul: 1903), 231-232.
[Footnote 657] United States v. Eliason, 41 U.S. (16 Pet.) 291, 301 -302 (1842); Kurtz v. Moffitt, 115 U.S. 487, 503 (1885); Smith v. Whitney, 116 U.S. 167, 180 -181 (1886). For a recent analysis of the approach to determining the validity of presidential, or other executive, regulations and orders under purported congressional delegations or implied executive power, see Chrysler Corp. v. Brown, 441 U.S. 281, 301 - 316 (1979).
[Footnote 658] In re Neagle, 135 U.S. 1 (1890).
[Footnote 659] Id., 64. The phrase, ''a law of the United States,'' came from the Act of March 2, 1833 (4 Stat. 632). However, in the Act of June 25, 1948, 62 Stat. 965, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2241(c)(2), the phrase is replaced by the term, ''an act of Congress,'' thereby eliminating the basis of the holding in Neagle.
[Footnote 660] 236 U.S. 459 (1915). See also Mason v. United States, 260 U.S. 545 (1923).
[Footnote 661] 10 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 332, 333. The provisions were invoked by President Eisenhower when he dispatched troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 to counter resistance to Federal District Court orders pertaining to desegregation of certain public schools in the Little Rock School District. Although the validity of his action was never expressly reviewed, the Court, in Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 4 , 18-19 (1958), rejected a contention advanced by critics of the legality of his conduct, namely, that the President's constitutional duty to see to the faithful execution of the laws as implemented by the provisions quoted above, does not afford a sanction for the use of troops to enforce decrees of federal courts, inasmuch as the latter are not statutory enactments which alone are comprehended within the phrase, ''laws of the United States.'' According to the Court, a judicial decision interpreting a constitutional provision, specifically the Court's interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment enunciated ''. . . in the Brown Case [ Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)] is the supreme law of the land, and Art. VI of the Constitution makes it of binding effect . . . .''
[Footnote 662] 1 Stat. 264 (1792); 1 Stat. 424 (1794); 2 Stat. 443 (1807); 12 Stat. 281 (1861); now covered by 10 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 332-334.
[Footnote 663] 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 19 (1827).
[Footnote 664] Id., 31-32.
[Footnote 665] Wilson, Federal Aid in Domestic Disturbances, S. Doc. No. 209, 57th Congress, 2d Sess. (1907), 51.
[Footnote 666] 6 Ops. Atty. Gen. 446 (1854). By the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, 20 Stat. 152, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1385, it was provided that ''it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress. . . .'' The effect of this prohibition, however, was largely nullified by a ruling of the Attorney General ''that by Revised Statutes 5298 and 5300 [10 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 332, 334] the military forces, under the direction of the President, could be used to assist a marshal. 16 Ops. Atty. Gen. 162.'' B. Rich, The Presidents and Civil Disorder
[Footnote 668] 212 U.S. 78 (1909).
[Footnote 669] In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564 (1895).
[Footnote 670] 212 U.S., 84-85. See also Sterling v. Constantin, 287 U.S. 378 (1932), which endorses Moyer v. Peabody, while emphasizing the fact that it applies only to a condition of disorder.
[Footnote 671] 158 U.S., 584, 586. Some years earlier, in United States v. San Jacinto Tin Co., 125 U.S. 273, 279 (1888), the Court sustained the right of the Attorney General and his assistants to institute suits simply by virtue of their general official powers. ''If,'' the Court said, ''the United States in any particular case has a just cause for calling upon the judiciary of the country, in any of its courts, for relief . . . the question of appealing to them must primarily be decided by the Attorney General . . . and if restrictions are to be placed upon the exercise of this authority it is for Congress to enact them.'' Cf. Hayburn's Case, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 409 (1792), in which the Court rejected Attorney General Randolph's contention that he had the right ex officio to move for a writ of mandamus ordering the United States circuit court for Pennsylvania to put the Invalid Pension Act into effect.
[Footnote 672] 47 Stat. 170 (1932), 29 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 101-115.
[Footnote 673] 330 U.S. 258 (1947). In reaching the result, Chief Justice Vinson invoked the ''rule that statutes which in general terms divest preexisting rights or privileges will not be applied to the sovereign without express words to that effect.'' Id., 272.
[Footnote 674] Thus, the Chief Justice noted that ''we agree'' that the debates on Norris-LaGuardia ''indicate that Congress, in passing the Act, did not intend to permit the United States to continue to intervene by injunction in purely private labor disputes.'' Of course, he continued, ''whether Congress so intended or not is a question different from the one before us now.'' Id., 278.
[Footnote 675] 61 Stat. 136, 155 (1947), 29 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 176-180. Cf. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), with regard to the exclusivity of proceeding.
[Footnote 676] 403 U.S. 713 (1971).
[Footnote 677] On Justice Marshall's view on the lack of authorization, see id., 740-748 (concurring opinion); for the dissenters on this issue, see id., 752, 755-759 (Justice Harlan, with whom Chief Justice Burger and Justice Blackmun joined); and see id., 727, 729-730 (Justice Stewart, joined by Justice White, concurring).