Thread by @CharlesSoule

Speaking of national emergencies, there’s a famous Supreme Court case, Youngstown v. Sawyer. Bet we’ll be hearing about it in days to come.

The case revolved around a President (Truman) who justified an extreme act via a claim of a national emergency.

“Nuh-uh,” said the Court.

Truman grabbed a bunch of privately-owned steel mills to prevent a strike (more or less.) He justified this by saying there was a national emergency on because of the Korean War, and we needed our steel production to continue uninterrupted.

The thing was, he went around Congress to do it, and the Supreme Court doesn’t like that. Those Justices are essentially guardians of the Constitution, and the Constitution says every branch has its powers and responsibilities. The Prez can’t just sidestep Congress.

The other part of the Youngstown ruling that’s interesting- and pertinent today, too - is that they found there was no emergency at all. We had steel piled up in warehouses all around the country.

So, Youngstown v. Sawyer established (at least) two important things about Presidents doing things without Congressional approval by declaring a national emergency: 1. it’s frowned upon and will be closely scrutinized, and 2. there better actually BE a national emergency.

The Youngstown ruling has been affirmed many times - it’s settled law - and maybe we’ll be hearing about it again soon. Trump and Truman both start with TRUM, which rhymes with conundrum, which is what this whole thing is shaping up to be.

If you want to read more about Youngstown v. Sawyer, Wikipedia has a good writeup here:en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youngstow…

This concludes this installment of “Charles Tweets About Legal Crap Pertinent to Current Events.” Thank you for joining us.