Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer

{{title-italics}}{{law}}{{caselaw|Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer|343 U.S. 579|June 2, 1952}}
'''''Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer''''' 343 U.S. 579 (1952) was a [[Supreme Court]] case which probed the limits of the Executive's control over the homeland in a time of war.  The three-part structural test used by Justice {{wpl|Robert H. Jackson}} is still used by the Court today, and is a successful formulation of doctrine used by the Court even in the centuries ''prior'' to Youngstown.

==Facts==
In 1951, the [[United States]] [[Korean War|went to war with]] [[North Korea]]. [[Harry S. Truman|President Truman]], judging the nation's industrial capacity as an extremely important tool in the war, was concerned by [[Trade union|labor]] unrest at the Youngstown plant in question. When a [[strike]] ensued, Truman attempted to seize the Youngstown plant under an Executive Order.

Critical to the case is the fact that the [[Congress]] had previously considered granting such power to [[President of the United States|the President]], in a labor relations bill, but declined to do so.

==Holding==
The Court invalidated Truman's Executive Order. Bypassing an inquiry as to whether or not the President had the power to do this in the presence of congressional silence, the Court noted that the Congress had explicitly forbidden the President from taking this action, and that the President, as the "executor" of the laws, may not overstep the Congress' limits upon his office. Justice Jackson gave the following test:
# Where the Executive acts with Congressional approval, his power is at its zenith, and the Court will rarely check his power. Future cases have still set limits on this category (see ''Hamdi'' for Justice [[Sandra Day O'Connor]]'s analysis of it).
# Where the Executive acts without Congressional approval or disapproval, there is a "twilight" area that the Court will analyze closely, and on a case-by-case basis.
# Where the Executive acts with Congressional disapproval, his power is at its "lowest ebb," and the Court will almost always invalidate Executive action.

The case sidesteps the possibility that the President has independent powers, treating him as an enabler and custodian of the law of Congress, under the "Take Care" clause of the [[United States Constitution|Constitution]] (Article II, Section 2).

== Notes & Subsequent History ==
''Youngstown'' characterizes the ''institutional process'' approach to [[separation of powers]], whereby, when the President's actions raise a Constitutional question, rather than inquire as to the right the Executive has to take the action, if the action is done with Congressional approval, it is almost always constitutional.  While civil libertarians fear that this may result in the death of [[civil liberties]], commentators Issacharoff & Pildes argued that the Youngstown approach underlies earlier cases such as ''Milligan'', and ''Korematsu'', and further point out that the ''Youngstown'' institutional process approach has allowed the United States to effectively balance [[freedom]] & extreme situations without an inquiry as to basic rights, obviating a need for a special rights inquiry.<ref>Issacharoff & Pildes, "Between Civil Libertarianism and Executive Unilateralism: An Institutional Process Approach to Rights During Wartime" (accessible [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=427821 here]).</ref> A grain of salt is in order in considering their argument, though, inasmuch as they appear to agree with the court's holding in favor of the constitutionality of [[Japanese American internment|imprisonment on the basis of race with no semblance of judicial process]] in ''Korematsu''.

Justice {{wpl|Felix Frankfurter}} concurred in the opinion, and wrote that the Executive had exceeded his authority in seizing the steel plants. Interestingly, as a young lawyer, Frankfurter had come to the exact opposite conclusion! The fact of Frankfurter's separate concurrence, then, is a high point of American constitutional law. It demonstrates that, to paraphrase Justice {{wpl|Benjamin N. Cardozo||,}} when a lawyer becomes a Justice, he or she steps before the bar anew, stripped bare of prior interests and acting only in defense of the Constitution, and not an ideological agenda.

The ''Youngstown'' test underlies the holding in ''Hamdi v. Rumsfeld'' and ''Hamdan v. Rumsfeld'', two important executive power cases arising from the [[terrorism|War on Terror]].

==References==
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[[Category:United States Supreme Court cases]]

Categories: United States Supreme Court cases