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
that government possesses the power of acquiring territory, either by
conquest or by treaty."[9] And from the power to acquire territory, he
continues, arises as "the inevitable consequence" the right to govern
it.[10] Subsequently, powers have been repeatedly ascribed to the
National Government by the Court on grounds which ill accord with the
doctrine of enumerated powers: the power to legislate in effectuation of
the "rights expressly given, and duties expressly enjoined" by the
Constitution;[11] the power to impart to the paper currency of the
Government the quality of legal tender in the payment of debts;[12] the
power to acquire territory by discovery;[13] the power to legislate for
the Indian tribes wherever situated in the United States;[14] the power
to exclude and deport aliens;[15] and to require that those who are
admitted be registered and fingerprinted;[16] and finally the complete
powers of sovereignty, both those of war and peace, in the conduct of
foreign relations. In the words of Justice Sutherland in United States
_v._ Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation,[17] decided in 1936: "The broad
statement that the federal government can exercise no powers except
those specifically enumerated in the Constitution, and such implied
powers as are necessary and proper to carry into effect the enumerated
powers, is categorically true only in respect of our internal affairs.
In that field, the primary purpose of the Constitution was to carve from
the general mass of legislative powers _then possessed by the states_
such portions as it was thought desirable to vest in the federal
government, leaving those not included in the enumeration still in the
states.... That this doctrine applies only to powers which the states
had, is self evident. And since the states severally never possessed
international powers, such powers could not have been carved from the
mass of state powers but obviously were transmitted to the United States
from some other source.... A political society cannot endure without a
supreme will somewhere. Sovereignty is never held in suspense. When,
therefore, the external sovereignty of Great Britain in respect of the
colonies ceased, it immediately passed to the Union.... It results that
the investment of the federal government with the powers of external
sovereignty did not depend upon the affirmative grants of the
Constitution. The powers to declare and wage war, to conclude peace, to
make treaties, to maintain diplomatic relations with other
sovereignties, if they had never been mentioned in the Constitution,
would have vested in the federal government as necessary concomitants of
nationality."[18] Yet for the most part, these holdings do not, as
Justice Sutherland suggests, directly affect "the internal affairs" of
the nation; they touch principally its peripheral relations, as it
were. The most serious inroads on the doctrine of enumerated powers are,
in fact, those which have taken place under cover of the doctrine--the
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