The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation: Annotations of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to June 30, 1952
History
The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation: Annotations of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to June 30, 1952
Constitutional law -- United States; Constitutions -- United States
The last element of the concept of Federalism to demand attention is the
doctrine that the National Government is a government of enumerated
powers only, and consequently under the necessity at all times of
justifying its measures juridically by pointing to some particular
clause or clauses of the Constitution which, when read separately or in
combination, may be thought to grant power adequate to such measures. In
spite of such recent decisions as that in United States _v._ Darby, this
time-honored doctrine still guides the authoritative interpreters of the
Constitution in determining the validity of acts which are passed by
Congress in presumed exercise of its powers of domestic legislation--the
course of reasoning pursued by the Chief Justice in the Darby Case
itself is proof that such is the fact. In the field of foreign
relations, on the contrary, the doctrine of enumerated powers has always
had a difficult row to hoe, and today may be unqualifiedly asserted to
be defunct.
As early as the old case of Penhallow _v._ Doane, which was decided by
the Supreme Court in 1795, certain counsel thought it pertinent to urge
the following conception of the War Power:
A formal compact is not essential to the institution of a
government. Every nation that governs itself, under what form
soever, without any dependence on a foreign power, is a
sovereign state. In every society there must be a sovereignty.
1 Dall. Rep. 46, 57. Vatt. B. 1. ch. 1. sec. 4. The powers of
war form an inherent characteristic of national sovereignty;
and, it is not denied, that Congress possessed those
powers....[23]
To be sure, only two of the Justices felt it necessary to comment on
this argument, which one of them endorsed, while the other rejected it.
Yet seventy-five years later Justice Bradley incorporated closely
kindred doctrine into his concurring opinion in the Legal Tender
Cases;[24] and in the years following the Court itself frequently
brought the same general outlook to questions affecting the National
Government's powers in the field of foreign relations. Thus in the
Chinese Exclusion Case, decided in 1889, Justice Field, in asserting the
unlimited power of the National Government, and hence of Congress, to
exclude aliens from American shores, remarked:
While under our Constitution and form of government the great
mass of local matters is controlled by local authorities, the
United States, in their relation to foreign countries and
their subjects or citizens, are one nation, invested with the
powers which belong to independent nations, the exercise of
which can be invoked for the maintenance of its absolute
independence and security throughout its entire territory.[25]
And four years later the power of the National Government to deport
alien residents at the option of Congress was based by Justice Gray on
the same general reasoning.[26]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account