Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
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Unit: $U93

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Cite as: 524 U. S. 417 (1998)

465

Opinion of Scalia, J.

prohibits the Executive augmentation of congressional dis-
positions in the course of implementing statutes that author-
ize such augmentation—generally known as substantive
rulemaking. There are, to be sure, limits upon the former
just as there are limits upon the latter—and I am prepared
to acknowledge that the limits upon the former may be much
more severe. Those limits are established, however, not by
some categorical prohibition of Art. I, § 7, which our cases
conclusively disprove, but by what has come to be known
as the doctrine of unconstitutional delegation of legislative
authority: When authorized Executive reduction or augmen-
tation is allowed to go too far, it usurps the nondelegable
function of Congress and violates the separation of powers.
It is this doctrine, and not the Presentment Clause, that
was discussed in the Field opinion, and it is this doctrine,
and not the Presentment Clause, that is the issue presented
by the statute before us here. That is why the Court is
correct to distinguish prior authorizations of Executive can-
cellation, such as the one involved in Field, on the ground
that they were contingent upon an Executive ﬁnding of fact,
and on the ground that they related to the ﬁeld of foreign
affairs, an area where the President has a special “ ‘degree
of discretion and freedom,’ ” ante, at 445 (citation omitted).
These distinctions have nothing to do with whether the de-
tails of Art. I, § 7, have been complied with, but everything
to do with whether the authorizations went too far by trans-
ferring to the Executive a degree of political, lawmaking
power that our traditions demand be retained by the Legis-
lative Branch.

I turn, then, to the crux of the matter: whether Congress’s
authorizing the President to cancel an item of spending gives
him a power that our history and traditions show must reside
exclusively in the Legislative Branch.
I may note, to begin
with, that the Line Item Veto Act is not the ﬁrst statute
to authorize the President to “cancel” spending items.
In
Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U. S. 714 (1986), we addressed the