Opinion ID: 1962463
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Legislative veto as excessive law-making power.

Text: The legislative veto gives the Legislature unlimited potential to block any rules promulgated pursuant to a particular statute. The Legislature can use this power to exert a policy-making effect equivalent to amending or repealing existing legislation. A veto which effectively amends or repeals existing law offends the Constitution because it is tantamount to passage of a new law without the approval of the Governor. This violates the separation of powers, N.J.Const. (1947), Art. III, ¶ 1, and the Presentment Clause, Art. V, § 1, ¶ 14. As we have pointed out, such use of the veto also interferes with the Executive's constitutional responsibility to execute the law. We have previously described the limits on legislative power in the absence of presentment to the Governor. In re N.Y., Susquehanna & Western R.R. Co., 25 N.J. 343 (1957). In that case the Board of Public Utility Commissioners had before it a rail carrier's application for permission to discontinue passenger service. While the application was pending, the Legislature passed a concurrent resolution declaring a policy against further curtailment of such service. The commissioners denied the application, finding themselves obliged to yield to the Legislature's concurrent resolution. The Court reversed: It is perfectly clear the Concurrent Resolution is not an act of legislation.... The resolution here involved is a concurrent one, and of course was never submitted to the Governor for his action. Except within the precincts of the Legislature, or perhaps where it acquires force by virtue of some specific statute, a concurrent resolution is ordinarily an expression of sentiment or opinion, without legislative quality of any coercive or operative effect. [ Id. at 348] N.Y., Susquehanna supports the proposition that no legislative action may have substantial policy-making effects without the approval of the Governor or a two-thirds vote of both houses of the Legislature. The unlimited power to foreclose agency action granted to the Legislature in L. 1981, c. 27, allows it to nullify enabling legislation or to redirect its application as if the statute had been amended or repealed. Such law making replaces duly enacted statutes with laws made in contravention of the Constitution's required procedures. It allows precisely what the separation of powers was intended to forbid, the propensity of the legislative department to intrude upon the rights, and to absorb the powers, of the other departments, The Federalist No. 73 at 476 (R. Luce ed. 1976) (Hamilton), and the nullification of the executive veto's salutary check upon the legislative body, calculated to guard the community against the effects of faction, precipitancy, or of any impulse unfriendly to the public good. Id. at 477. For precisely these reasons, in Consumer Energy, supra, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the congressional veto of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ratemaking rules was an exercise of legislative power that violated the federal Constitution's presentment clause in Article I, § 7. The Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978, 15 U.S.C. § 3301 to 3342, directed FERC to implement an incremental pricing program to shift part of the price increases resulting from natural gas deregulation from residential users to industrial users. The House of Representatives vetoed Phase II of FERC's rules, which expanded the program to a broad category of industrial plants. The federal appeals court rejected the position of congressional amici that use of the veto was not congressional law making, but rather a refusal to enact proposed legislation, which of course the Legislature can always do without presentment to the executive. We emphatically reject this position, and hold that the veto of the Phase II rule effectively changed the law by altering the scope of FERC's discretion and preventing an otherwise valid regulation from taking effect. Accordingly, the Senate's concurrence and presentation to the President were necessary prerequisites to the effectiveness of the disapproval resolution. [673 F. 2d at 465] The Court described at some length the extent to which the congressional veto of FERC's incremental pricing plan effected a change in policy. This change was prompted by legislative reassessments and new political pressures. The court's description of the veto's policy-making function and statement of its constitutional infirmity are worth repeating: The 1980 debates in the House make clear that the policy embodied in Title II and in the Phase II rule was being re-evaluated in light of the limited experience under Phase I and the economic conditions that had developed since 1978. Representative Preyer commended the vigorous rejection of a theory overrun by reality, Representative Stockman stated that our purpose today is simply to lay to rest by the agency of legislative veto a dubious regulatory experiment that has been overtaken by the rush of events and unanticipated developments, and Representative Gramm added that every argument that has been made ... against phase II is equally applicable to phase I. Congressional amici themselves admit that in vetoing the rules the House was making a social policy judgment, an assessment that is peculiarly legislative in nature because it is a predictive assessment, using public participation and collective decisionmaking, with democratic accountability as the final test of judgment. The only thing missing from this description is the crucial fact that the Congress had already made one judgment on this policy problem, and had agreed to allow FERC to formulate a rule that would go into effect without further congressional action. In taking its second look at the problem, Congress undeniably engaged in a reconsideration of its previously enacted policy. This is precisely the kind of decision that the Constitution envisions will be made only by both houses with the participation of the President through his veto power. The President and both houses of Congress agreed on a policy when they took their first look. Undoing this policy requires adherence to the same procedure. [673 F. 2d at 468 (footnotes omitted)] Two state high courts have rejected similar legislative veto schemes in declaring the exercise of such power to violate those states' separation of powers and presentment clauses. In State ex rel. Barker v. Manchin, 279 S.E. 2d 622, 632 (W. Va. 1981), the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals stated that The power of the ... legislative body to sustain or to reverse such [agency] actions either by concurrent resolution or by inertia, constitutes a legislative veto power comparable to the authority vested in the Governor, as head of the Executive Department, by W. Va.Const. art. VII, § 14, and reverses the constitutional concept of government whereby the Legislature enacts the law subject to the approval or the veto of the Governor. The Alaska Supreme Court reached the same result in State v. A.L.I.V.E. Voluntary, 606 P. 2d 769, 779 (1980). We also reject the argument that the Act is constitutional merely because it was passed in accord with Presentment Clause requirements. The Legislature cannot pass an act that allows it to violate the Constitution. The Court rejected a similar argument in Inganamort v. Borough of Fort Lee, 72 N.J. 412 (1977). There a municipality attempted to extend by resolution a duly enacted rent control ordinance that had provided for its own extension by the passage of a resolution. We held that the extension of a rent control ordinance was legislation that could not take effect without the public notice and participation required to enact a municipal ordinance. The borough could not enact an ordinance allowing it to make future laws in violation of required law-making procedures. The [municipality's] argument would allow it to accomplish indirectly what it had no power to do directly. Clearly, the duration of the regulation involved an important aspect of the legislative judgment and should be subject to the same procedural safeguards which were required to attend the passage of the rent measure in the first instance. [ Id. at 420] Similarly, the Legislature cannot circumvent the constitutional requirement of presentment to the Governor merely by passing a statute which allows such a procedure. Government survives only if individuals guide themselves according to its laws. By restraining the Legislature's ability to make, amend and revoke the law, the Presentment Clause adds stability and certainty that are essential in any law-abiding society. The internal effects of a mutable policy are ... calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if... [they] undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed? [ The Federalist No. 62 at 406 (R. Luce ed. 1976) (Hamilton or Madison)]. A recent study of congressional use of the legislative veto reveals that it is often used to alter existing legislation without presentment to the President. Such use is tempting because it avoids the more difficult, but constitutionally required, process of amendment or repeal. In all the programs [examined in the study] except .. . [one], there was repeated major legislation during the period under study. Congress could have used such legislation to resolve issues that had emerged in rulemaking programs subject to legislative vetoes. Whether for reasons of indecision or deadlock, however, it ordinarily chose to leave these issues open in the revised statutes and to rely on the legislative veto mechanism to maintain control over agency policy initiatives. [Bruff & Gellhorn, 90 Harv.L.Rev. at 1409-10 (footnotes omitted). We recognize that some applications of the veto provision in the Legislative Oversight Act, L. 1981, c. 27, would further statutory schemes of cooperation between the legislative and executive branches, rather than altering or frustrating the enforcement of statutory policy. However, it is not necessary for the Courts to hypothesize about every conceivable use of the Oversight Act's veto provision. The all-inclusive veto provision in L. 1981, c. 27, gives the Legislature the potential to disregard at will the constitutional scheme of checks and balances in exercising policy-making power. This violates both the separation of powers and the Presentment Clause.