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524US2

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CLINTON v. CITY OF NEW YORK

Breyer, J., dissenting

disputes arising under federal dock workers’ compensation
statute). See generally, e. g., OPP Cotton Mills, Inc. v. Ad-
ministrator of Wage and Hour Div., Dept. of Labor, 312 U. S.
126, 145 (1941) (“In an increasingly complex society Congress
obviously could not perform its functions” without delegat-
ing details of regulatory scheme to executive agency);
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 635
(1952) (Jackson, J., concurring) (Constitution permits “in-
terdependence” and ﬂexible relations between branches in
order to secure “workable government”); J. W. Hampton,
Jr., & Co. v. United States, 276 U. S. 394, 406 (1928) (Taft,
C. J.) (“[T]he extent and character of . . . assistance [between
the different branches] must be ﬁxed according to common
sense and the inherent necessities of the governmental co-
ordination”); Crowell v. Benson, supra, at 53 (“[R]egard must
be had” in cases “where constitutional limits are invoked,
not to mere matters of form but to the substance of what
is required”).

Indeed, Chief Justice Marshall, in a well-known passage,

explained,

“To have prescribed the means by which government
should, in all future time, execute its powers, would
have been to change, entirely, the character of the in-
It
strument, and give it the properties of a legal code.
would have been an unwise attempt to provide, by im-
mutable rules, for exigencies which, if foreseen at all,
must have been seen dimly, and which can be best pro-
vided for as they occur.” McCulloch v. Maryland, 4
Wheat. 316, 415 (1819).

This passage, like the cases I have just mentioned, calls at-
tention to the genius of the Framers’ pragmatic vision, which
this Court has long recognized in cases that ﬁnd constitu-
tional room for necessary institutional innovation.

Third, we need not here referee a dispute among the other

two branches. And, as the majority points out: