Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 521

524US2

Unit: $U93

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476

CLINTON v. CITY OF NEW YORK

Breyer, J., dissenting

power to raise tariff rates “was a part of the law itself, as it
left the hands of Congress” (emphasis added)).

Nor can one dismiss this literal compliance as some kind
of formal quibble, as if it were somehow “obvious” that what
the President has done “amounts to,” “comes close to,” or
is “analogous to” the repeal or amendment of a previously
enacted law. That is because the power the Act grants the
President (to render designated appropriations items with-
out “legal force or effect”) also “amounts to,” “comes close
to,” or is “analogous to” a different legal animal, the delega-
tion of a power to choose one legal path as opposed to an-
other, such as a power to appoint.

To take a simple example, a legal document, say, a will or
a trust instrument, might grant a beneﬁciary the power (a)
to appoint property “to Jones for his life, remainder to Smith
for 10 years so long as Smith . . . etc., and then to Brown,”
or (b) to appoint the same property “to Black and the heirs
of his body,” or (c) not to exercise the power of appointment
at all. See, e. g., 5 W. Bowe & D. Parker, Page on Law of
Wills § 45.8 (rev. 3d ed. 1962) (describing power of appoint-
ment). To choose the second or third of these alternatives
prevents from taking effect the legal consequences that ﬂow
from the ﬁrst alternative, which the legal instrument de-
scribes in detail. Any such choice, made in the exercise of
a delegated power, renders that ﬁrst alternative language
without “legal force or effect.” But such a choice does not
“repeal” or “amend” either that language or the document
itself. The will or trust instrument, in delegating the power
of appointment, has not delegated a power to amend or to
repeal the instrument; to the contrary, it requires the dele-
gated power to be exercised in accordance with the instru-
ment’s terms.

Id., § 45.9, pp. 516–518.

The trust example is useful not merely because of its sim-
plicity, but also because it illustrates the logic that must
apply when a power to execute is conferred, not by a private
trust document, but by a federal statute. This is not the