Also, what comprises a national emergency has not been clearly defined by the courts. Rather than setting forth specific criteria, the courts have given the President wholesale discretion to determine the boundaries of what constitutes a national emergency. The familiar rationale is that extra latitude should be given to the President in this area due to the need for expediency. The current legal status of the emergency powers of the President involves so many statutes and executive orders that misconceptions abound. Since some of these legal instruments revoke prior ones, and some absorb the content of others, the confusion seems to multiply.
Executive orders tend to build upon each other, with previous orders justifying subsequent ones.
This legislation was an amendment to the Trading with the Enemies Act , which was originally passed by Congress in 1917. Due to the circumstances surrounding World War I, the President was granted full authoritarian control of citizens of enemy countries, and their property, who were living or working in this country. At this point, U.S. citizens were made enemies of the federal government. In 1971 Congress was astonished to discover that our nation had been in a continuous state of national emergency since Roosevelt's proclamations of 1933. Additionally, still binding were the emergencies proclaimed by Truman in 1950 and Nixon in 1970.