Politics Department
Professor Peter Woll
To help you review for this exam see
Case Notes
Midterm Examination Oct. 30, 2002The midterm will consist of approximately 5 short-answer questions containing terms, cases, and concepts, where
you will be asked to identify and explain their significance in constitutional law. When you
are asked about a case give a brief overview of the facts, reasoning, and rule of law.
Then briefly give its significance in the broader picture of constitutional law. If you
are asked about a term, such as functionalism, define it and give case examples of
its use and significance.
The second part of your exam will be an essay question that will focus on judicial review of cases that raise the question of how the constitutional system of separation of powers should be defined. Students should be conversant with the Schechter
Rule and how the Court has modified
or applied it in subsequent cases such as Mistretta v. United States and United States v. Curtiss Wright Export Corporation.
How has the Court interpreted separation of powers requirements in cases dealing with presidential powers? Constrast The Steel Seizure Cases with Dames and Moore v. Regan on constitutional standards governing how the President and
Congress interact. Does the Constitution support a limited Madisonian presidency or Hamilton's imperial presidency? How do the Steel Seizure Cases opinions of Black, Frankfurter, and
Jackson for the majority and Vinson for the dissent help us answer
this question?
The Court defines the boundaries of presidential power in Myers v. United States, Humphrey's Executor v. United States, United States v. Nixon, Morrison v. Olson, and Clinton v. New York. Did Justice Kennedy get to the heart of the separation of powers when he
wrote in his Clinton v. New York concurrence:
I write to respond to my colleague JUSTICE BREYER , who observes that the statute does not
threaten the liberties of individual citizens, a point on which I disagree. See post, at 29. The
argument is related to his earlier suggestion that our role is lessened here because the two
political branches are adjusting their own powers between themselves. Post, at 4, 14-15. To say
the political branches have a somewhat free hand to reallocate their own authority would seem
to require acceptance of two premises: first, that the public good demands it, and second, that
liberty is not at risk. The former premise is inadmissible. The Constitution's structure requires a
stability which transcends the convenience of the moment. See Metropolitan Washington
Airports Authority v. Citizens for Abatement of Aircraft Noise, Inc., 501 U.S. 252, 276-277
(1991); Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714, 736 (1986); INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 944-945,
958-959 (1983); Northern Pipeline Constr. Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U.S. 50, 73-74
(1982). The latter premise, too, is flawed. Liberty is always at stake when one or more of the
branches seek to transgress the separation of powers.
Separation of powers was designed to implement a fundamental insight: concentration of power
in the hands of a single branch is a threat to liberty. The Federalist states the axiom in these
explicit terms: "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the
same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." The Federalist No. 47,
p. 301 (C. Rossiter ed., 1961). So convinced were the Framers that liberty of the person inheres
in structure that at first they did not consider a Bill of Rights necessary. The Federalist No. 84,
pp. 513, 515; G. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, pp. 536-543
(1969). It was at Madison's insistence that the First Congress enacted the Bill of Rights. R.
Goldwin, From Parchment to Power 75-153 (1997). It would be a grave mistake, however, to
think a Bill of Rights in Madison's scheme then or in sound constitutional theory now renders
separation of powers of lesser importance. See Amar, The Bill of Rights as a Constitution, 100
Yale L. J. 1131, 1132 (1991).
In recent years, perhaps, we have come to think of liberty as defined by that word in the Fifth
and Fourteenth Amendments and as illuminated by the other provisions of the Bill of Rights. The
conception of liberty embraced by the Framers was not so confined. They used the principles of
separation of powers and federalism to secure liberty in the fundamental political sense of the
term, quite in addition to the idea of freedom from intrusive governmental acts. The idea and the
promise were that when the people delegate some degree of control to a remote central
authority, one branch of government ought not possess the power to shape their destiny without a
sufficient check from the other two. In this vision, liberty demands limits on the ability of any
one branch to influence basic political decisions. Quoting Montesquieu, the Federalist Papers
made the point in the following manner:
" 'When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body,' says
he, 'there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or
senate should enact tyrannical laws to execute them in a tyrannical manner.' Again: 'Were
the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be
exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. Were it joined to
the executive power, the judge might behave with all the violence of an oppressor. ' "
The Federalist No. 47, supra, at 303.
It follows that if a citizen who is taxed has the measure of the tax or the decision to spend
determined by the Executive alone, without adequate control by the citizen's Representatives in
Congress, liberty is threatened. Money is the instrument of policy and policy affects the lives of
citizens. The individual loses liberty in a real sense if that instrument is not subject to traditional
constitutional constraints.
The principal object of the statute, it is true, was not to enhance the President's power to reward
one group and punish another, to help one set of taxpayers and hurt another, to favor one State
and ignore another. Yet these are its undeniable effects. The law establishes a new mechanism
which gives the President the sole ability to hurt a group that is a visible target, in order to
disfavor the group or to extract further concessions from Congress. The law is the functional
equivalent of a line item veto and enhances the President's powers beyond what the Framers
would have endorsed.
It is no answer, of course, to say that Congress surrendered its authority by its own hand; nor
does it suffice to point out that a new statute, signed by the President or enacted over his veto,
could restore to Congress the power it now seeks to relinquish. That a congressional cession of
power is voluntary does not make it innocuous. The Constitution is a compact enduring for more
than our time, and one Congress cannot yield up its own powers, much less those of other
Congresses to follow. See Freytag v. Commissioner, 501 U.S. 868, 880 (1991); cf. Chadha,
supra, at 942, n. 13. Abdication of responsibility is not part of the constitutional design.
Separation of powers helps to ensure the ability of each branch to be vigorous in asserting its
proper authority. In this respect the device operates on a horizontal axis to secure a proper
balance of legislative, executive, and judicial authority. Separation of powers operates on a
vertical axis as well, between each branch and the citizens in whose interest powers must be
exercised. The citizen has a vital interest in the regularity of the exercise of governmental
power. If this point was not clear before Chadha, it should have been so afterwards. Though
Chadha involved the deportation of a person, while the case before us involves the expenditure
of money or the grant of a tax exemption, this circumstance does not mean that the vertical
operation of the separation of powers is irrelevant here. By increasing the power of the
President beyond what the Framers envisioned, the statute compromises the political liberty of
our citizens, liberty which the separation of powers seeks to secure.
The Constitution is not bereft of controls over improvident spending. Federalism is one
safeguard, for political accountability is easier to enforce within the States than nationwide. The
other principal mechanism, of course, is control of the political branches by an informed and re
sponsible electorate. Whether or not federalism and control by the electorate are adequate for
the problem at hand, they are two of the structures the Framers designed for the problem the
statute strives to confront. The Framers of the Constitution could not command statesmanship.
They could simply provide structures from which it might emerge. The fact that these
mechanisms, plus the proper functioning of the separation of powers itself, are not employed, or
that they prove insufficient, cannot validate an otherwise unconstitutional device. With these
observations, I join the opinion of the Court.
Read Kennedy's opinion carefully. I will take
a quote from it and ask you to apply it
to selected cases dealing with the
constitutional separation of powers. For
example, Kennedy writes:
Could the same be said of
Methods of constitutional interpretation: Formalism and Functionalism
Marbury v. Madison (1803)
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
Original Intent
Enumerated Powers
Representation Reinforcement
Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)
Lochner v. New York (1905)
Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)
Roe v. Wade (1973)
The Slaughterhouse Cases (1873)
The Privileges and Immunities Clause
The 14th Amentment's Due Process Clause
The 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause
Robert Bork's Slaughterhouse Analysis
The Case and Controversy Requirement
Constitutional Requirements For Standing Other Cases and Terms for Review
Constitutional Law
A nation cannot plunder its own treasury without putting its Constitution and its survival in peril.
The [line-item veto]statute before us, then, is of first importance, for it seems undeniable the Act will tend to
restrain persistent excessive spending. Nevertheless, for the reasons given by JUSTICE
STEVENS in the opinion for the Court, the statute must be found invalid. Failure of political
will does not justify unconstitutional remedies.
By increasing the power of the
President beyond what the Framers envisioned, the statute compromises the political liberty of
our citizens, liberty which the separation of powers seeks to secure
Cases and Areas to be Covered in the Exam