1952 June 2

Supreme Court Overrules Truman: Limits Presidential Power in Steel Seizure Case

 

The Supreme Court on this day overturned President Harry Truman’s seizure of the steel mills in a landmark case on presidential power.

On April 8, 1952, Truman had seized control of the U.S. steel mills, which had been shut because of a strike by steelworkers. The U.S. was still involved in the Korean War at that moment, and Truman argued that the strike threatened the national interest. The seizure provoked strong criticism over Truman’s claims of presidential power. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, the Supreme Court overturned Truman’s seizure of the mills by a 6-to-3 vote.

The most important part of the decision was Justice Robert Jackson’s concurring opinion, in which he set forth a framework for analyzing controversies over presidential power, and which has guided subsequent court decisions on the subject, up to and including President George W. Bush’s claims of presidential power in the war on terrorism. See the first important case: Rasul v. Bush, June 28, 2004.

See also Justice Robert Jackson’s inspiring opinion in the 1943 flag salute case, West Virginia v. Barnette, on June 14, 1943, where he wrote that a person cannot be compelled to salute the flag in violation of his or her conscience.

The Court: “The order cannot properly be sustained as an exercise of the President’s military power as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. The Government attempts to do so by citing a number of cases upholding broad powers in military commanders engaged in day-to-day fighting in a theater of war. Such cases need not concern us here. Even though ‘theater of war’ be an expanding concept, we cannot with faithfulness to our constitutional system hold that the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces has the ultimate power as such to take possession of private property in order to keep labor disputes from stopping production. This is a job for the Nation’s lawmakers, not for its military authorities.”

Read about the case: Maeva Marcus, Truman and the Steel Seizure Case (1977)

Read Jackson’s opinion: http://www.oyez.org/cases/1950-1959/1951/1951_744

Learn about Presidential war powers: Peter Irons, War Powers: How the Imperial Presidency Hijacked the Constitution (2005)

Read about presidential power and the constitution here

Learn more about Truman and civil liberties: Samuel Walker, Presidents and Civil Liberties from Wilson to Obama (2012)

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