The National Emergencies Act was never meant for something like Trump's wall

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

The National Emergencies Act was never meant for something like Trump’s wall

The history of the law shows the White House would be misusing its powers

By Gerald S. Dickinson
Gerald S. Dickinson is a constitutional law and property professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
January 31

With the federal government now reopened, President Trump is threatening to invoke the National Emergencies Act as a lever to find money for the construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border — a policy that Congress very clearly does not support. Soon after announcing Friday that he would sign legislation to fund the government for three weeks, Trump declared, “If I don’t get a fair deal from Congress … I will use the powers afforded to me … to address this emergency.” He says he has the “absolute right” to declare a national emergency and order the military to build the wall to stop the threat of “illegal immigration” in the country. But the real threat is the specter of a sitting president wielding emergency powers to implement a public policy he can’t persuade Congress, let alone the public, to support. The law Trump is threatening to use was never meant to allow something like this.

Throughout the mid-1970s, Congress debated whether to terminate certain authorities given to the president to declare a national emergency. In particular, U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Cambodia piqued the interest of several members of Congress, who demanded a special study of the consequences of terminating a 1950 national emergency proclamation regarding the Vietnam War. At the time, the nation had technically been under a state of emergency for more than 40 years. Those emergency powers were extraordinary: The president could, among other things, restrict travel, seize property, organize and control the means of production and assign military forces abroad.

For example, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a national emergency to combat the Great Depression days after he took office. Harry S. Truman attempted to seize steel mills amid a strike during the Korean War. Richard Nixon invoked the power amid a postal workers' strike. A year later, Nixon declared a national emergency again to impose controls on foreign trade. Although Truman’s exercise of the emergency power was thwarted by the Supreme Court in Youngstown Steel v. Sawyer, the substance of the majority and concurring opinions offer useful insight into today’s debate about circumventing Congress to achieve a policy goal.

Justice Robert Jackson, for example, wrote an extraordinary concurring opinion in Youngstown. He looked to history as a road map for why restraints on executive emergencies powers were crucial to our constitutional republic. Germany’s Weimar constitution, Jackson wrote, was designed to secure civil liberties in the Western tradition, yet “the President of the Republic, without concurrence of the Reichstag, was empowered temporarily to suspend any or all individual rights if public safety and order were seriously disturbed or endangered … in 13 years suspension of rights was invoked on more than 250 occasions. Finally, Hitler persuaded President von Hindenburg to suspend all such rights, and they were never restored. …”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/31/emergency-powers-act-was-never-meant-something-like-trumps-wall/

[MosheFeingold]

1. You're correct

I think it is more likely that he will declare the southern border an “active drug corridor”.

It is, and the law gives broad powers to do thugs like build walls.

Everything else is just misdirection.

Thank the drug warriors.

[Igel]

2. That's the history of politics.

You set up a law. Then you see what you can get by with under it, find ways around it, or get the courts to declare it to mean something it never meant before. It produces glee on the side who that's getting away with something and cynicism on the part of everybody.

This is but one example.

[Nitram]

3. I assumed everyone on DU knew that by now.

[world wide wally]

4. ToTrump, the emergency is that he was told "NO"

[EarthFirst]

5. It's *such* an emergency that they're withholding it's declaration to maximize the optics!