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SENATE REPORT 93-549: War and Emergency Power Statutes | |||||||||||||||||
Senate Report 93-549 War and Emergency Powers Acts
EMERGENCY POWERS STATUTES: PROVISIONS OF FEDERAL LAW REPORT OF THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON THE TERMINATION OF THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY UNITED STATES SENATE NOVEMBER 19, 1973 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON : 1973 24-509 O I SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON THE
II FOREWORD Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency. In fact, there are now in effect four presidentially-proclaimed states of national emergency: In addition to the national emergency declared by President Roosevelt in 1933, there are also the national emergency proclaimed by President Truman on December 16, 1950, during the Korean conflict, and the states of national emergency declared by President Nixon on March 23, 1970, and August 15, 1971. These proclamations give force to 470 provisions of Federal law. These hundreds of statutes delegate to the President extraordinary powers, ordinarily exercised by the Congress, which affect the lives of American citizens in a host of all-encompassing manners. This vast range of powers, taken together, confer enough authority to rule the country without reference to normal Constitutional processes. Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: With the melting of the cold war--the developing detente with the Soviet Union and China, the stable truce of over 20 years duration between North and South Korea, and the end of U.S. involvement in the war in Indochina-there is no present need for the United States Government to continue to function under emergency conditions. The Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency was created1 to examine the consequences of terminating the declared states of national emergency that now prevail; to recommend what steps the Congress should take to ensure that the termination can be accomplished without adverse effect upon the necessary tasks of governing; and, also, to recommend ways in which the United States can meet future emergency situations with speed and effectiveness but without relinquishment of congressional oversight and control. In accordance with this mandate, the Special Committee-in conjunction with the Executive branch, expert constitutional authorities, as well as former high officials of this Government-is now engaged
Note 1: S. Res. 9, 93d Cong., 1st Sess. III in a detailed study to determine the most reasonable ways to restore normalcy to the operations of our Government. A first and necessary step was to bring together the body of statutes, which have been passed by Congress, conferring extraordinary powers upon the Executive branch in times of national emergency. This has been a most difficult task. Nowhere in the Government, in either the Executive or Legislative branches, did there exist a complete catalog of all emergency statutes. Many were aware that there had been a delegation of an enormous amount of power but, of how much power, no one knew. In order to correct this situation, the Special Committee staff was instructed to work with the Executive branch, the Library of Congress, and knowledgeable legal authorities to compile an authoritative list of delegated emergency powers. This Special Committee study, which contains a list of all provisions of Federal law, except the most trivial, conferring extraordinary powers in time of national emergency, was compiled by the staff under the direction of Staff Director William G. Miller, and Mr. Thomas A. Dine; utilizing the help of the General Accounting Office, the American Law Division of the Library of Congress, the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, and the Office of Emergency Planning. The Special Committee is grateful for the assistance provided by Jack. Goldklang of the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice; Lester S. Jayson, the director of the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress; Joseph E. Ross, head of the American Law Division of CRS; and especially Raymond Celada of the Ameri- can Law Division and his able assistants, Charles V. Dale and Grover S. Williams; Paul Armstrong of the General Accounting Office; Linda Lee, Patrick Norton, Roland Moore, William K. Sawyer, Audrey Hatry, Martha Mecham, and David J. Kyte. The Special Committee will also publish a list of Executive Orders, issued pursuant to statutes brought into force by declared states of emergency, at a later date.
IV
EMERGENCY POWERS STATUTES: November 19, 1973. - Ordered to be printed Mr. MATHIAS (for Mr. CHURCH) as co-chairman of the Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency, submitted the following REPORT A - A BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE ORIGINS A majority of the people of the United States have lived all of their lives under emergency rule. For 40 years, freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency. The problem of how a constitutional democracy reacts to great crises, however, far antedates the Great Depression. As a philosophical issue, its origins reach back to the Greek city-states and the Roman Republic. And, in the United States, actions taken by the Government in times of great crises have-from, at least, the Civil War-in important ways, shaped the present phenomenon of a permanent state of national emergency. American political theory of emergency government was derived and enlarged from John Locke, the English political-philosopher whose thought influenced the authors of the Constitution. Locke argued that the threat of national crisis-unforeseen, sudden, and potentially catastrophic-required the creation of broad executive (1) emergency powers to be exercised by the Chief Executive in situations where the legislative authority had not provided a means or procedure of remedy. Referring to emergency power in the 14th chapter of his Second Treatise on Civil Government as "prerogative"; Locke suggested that it: ...should be left to the discretion of him that has the executive power...since in some governments the lawmaking power is not always in being and is usually too numerous, and so too slow for the dispatch requisite to executions, and because, also it is impossible to foresee and so by laws to provide for all accidents and necessities that may concern the public, or make such laws as will do no harm, if they are executed with an inflexible rigour on all occasions and upon all persons that may come in their way, therefore there is a latitude left to the executive power to do many things of choice; which the laws do not prescribe. To what extent the Founding Fathers adhered to this view of the executive role in emergencies is a much disputed issue. Whatever their conceptions of this role, its development in practice has been based largely on the manner in which individual President's have viewed their office and its functions. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft argued the proper role of the President and, perhaps, their debate best expounds diametrically-opposed philosophies of the presidency. In his autobiography, Roosevelt asserted his "stewardship theory."
Roosevelt compared this principle of "stewardship" to what he called the Jackson-Lincoln theory, and contrasted it to the theory ascribed to William Howard Taft. Roosevelt's ideas on the limit of presidential authority and responsibility were vigorously disputed by Taft. In lectures on the presidency--delivered at Columbia University in 1915-1916-Taft responded that: ". . . the wide field of action that this would give to the Executive one can hardly limit. A President can exercise no power which cannot fairly and reasonably be traced to some specific grant of power." And he cautioned that: ". . . such specific grants must be (2)
either in the Federal Constitution, or in any act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest." In recent years, most scholars have interpreted the Roosevelt-Taft dispute in Roosevelt's favor. In the prevailing academic view, Roosevelt is described as "active", "expansionist", and "strong." The historical reality, in fact, does not afford such a sharp distinction either between the actions of these two Presidents, or between their analysis of the problem of emergency powers. Taft, in his concluding remarks to his Columbia lectures, said : "Executive power is limited, so far as it is possible to limit such a power consistent with that discretion and promptness of action that are essential to preserve the interests of the public in times of emergency or legislative neglect or inaction." Thus, even Taft was disposed to employ emergency power when the need arose, but, he did not wish to go beyond his own narrower, conservative conception of what was meant by constitutional and legal bounds. Thus, the dispute was over where those bounds lay, rather than the nature of the office itself. Taft's successor, Woodrow Wilson, was no less zealous in observing what he thought the Constitution demanded. Faced with the exigencies of World War I, Wilson found it necessary to expand executive emergency powers enormously. In many respects, this expansion ofpowers in wartime was based on precedents set by Lincoln decades earlier. Unlike Lincoln, however, Wilson relied heavily on Congress for official delegations of authority no matter how broadly these might be. Wilson's exercise of power in the First World War provided a model for future Presidents and their advisors. During the preparedeness period of 1915-1916, the submarine crisis in the opening months of 1917, and the period of direct involvement of U.S. armed forces from April 1917 to November 1918, Wilson utilized powers as sweeping as Lincoln's. Because governmental agencies were more highly organized and their jurisdictions wider, presidential powers were considerably more effective than ever before. Yet, perhaps, because of Wilson's scrupulous attention to obtaining prior congressional concurrence there was only one significant congressional challenge to Wilson's wartime measures. That challenge came in February-March 1917, following the severance of diplomatic relations with Germany. A group of Senators successfully filibustered a bill authorizing the arming of American merchant ships. In response--records American historian Frank Freidel in his book Roosevelt: the Apprenticeship - Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt found an old statute under which the President could proceed without fresh authorization from Congress. Roosevelt, impatient for action, was irritated because Wilson waited a few days before implementing the statute. Lincoln had drawn most heavily upon his power as Commander-in-Chief; Wilson exercised emergency power on the basis of old statutes and sweeping new legislation--thus drawing on congressional delegation as a source of authority: The most significant Wilsonian innovations were economic, including a wide array of defense and war agencies, modeled to some extent upon British wartime (3)
precedents. In August 1916 just prior to the United States entry into the war, Congress at Wilson's behest established a Council of National Defense-primarily advisory. In 1917, a War Industries Board, also relatively weak, began operating. The ineffectiveness of the economic mobilization led Republicans in Congress - in the winter of 1917-1918 to demand a coalition War Cabinet similar to that in England. Wilson forestalled Congress by proposing legislation delegating him almost total economic power and, even before legislative approval, authorized the War Industries Board to exercise extensive powers. Subsequently Congress enacted Wilson's measure, the Overman Act, in April 1918. Other legislation extended the economic authority of the Government in numerous directions. Following the allied victory, Wilson relinquished his wartime authority and asked Congress to repeal the emergency statutes, enacted to fight more effectively the war. Only a food-control measure and the 1917 Trading With the Enemy Act were retained. This procedure of terminating emergency powers when the particular emergency itself has, in fact, ended has not been consistently followed by his successors. The next major development in the use of executive emergency powers came under Franklin D. RooseveIt. The Great Depression had already overtaken the country by the time of Roosevelt's inauguration and confronted him with a totally different crisis. This emergency, unlike those of the past, presented a nonmilitary threat. The Roosevelt administration, however, conceived the economic crisis to be a calamity equally as great as a war and employed the metaphor of war to emphasize the depression's severity. In his inaugural address, Roosevelt said: "I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis--broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe." Many of the members of the Roosevelt administration, including F.D.R. himself, were veterans of the economic mobilization of World War I and drew upon their experiences to combat the new situation. The first New Deal agencies, indeed, bore strong resemblance to wartime agencies and many had the term "emergency" in their titles-such as the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and the National Emergency Council. In his first important official act, Roosevelt proclaimed a National Bank Holiday on the basis of the 1917 Trading With the Enemy Act - itself a wartime delegation of power. New Deal historian William E. Leuchtenburg writes:
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The Trading With the Enemy Act had, however, been specifically designed by its originators to meet only wartime exigencies. By employing it to meet the demands of the depression, Roosevelt greatly extended the concept of "emergencies" to which expansion of executive powers might be applied. And in so doing, he established a pattern that was followed frequently: In time of crisis the President should utilize any statutory authority readily at hand, regardless of its original purposes, with the firm expectation of ex post facto congressional concurrence. Beginning with F.D.R., then, extensive use of delegated powers exercised under an aura of crisis has become a dominant aspect of the presidency. Concomitant with this development has been a demeaning of the significance of "emergency." It became a term used to evoke public and congressional approbation, often bearing little actual relation to events. Roosevelt brain-truster, Rexford G. Tugwell, has described the manner in which Roosevelt used declarations of diferent degrees of emergency:
Roosevelt and his successor, Harry S. Truman, invoked formal states of emergency to justify extensive delegations of authority during actual times of war. The Korean war, however, by the fact of its never having been officially declared a "war" as such by Congress, further diluted the concept of what constituted circumstances sufficiently critical to warrant the delegation of extraordinary authority to the President. At the end of the Korean war, moreover, the official state of emergency was not terminated. It is not yet terminated. This may be primarily attributed to the continuance of the Cold War atmosphere which, until recent years, made the imminent threat of hostilities an accepted fact of everyday life, with "emergency" the normal state of affairs. In this, what is for all practical purposes, permanent state of emergency, Presidents have exercised numerous powers - most notably under the Trading With the Enemy Act - legitimated by that ongoing state of national emergency. Hundreds of others have lain fallow, there to be exercised at any time, requiring only an order from the President. Besides the 1933 1 and Korean war emergencies,2 two other states of declared national emergency remain in existence. On March 23, 1970, confronted by a strike of Postal Service employees, President Nixon declared a national emergency.3 The following year, on August
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15, 1971, Nixon proclaimed another emergency,1 under which he imposed stringent import controls in order to meet an international monetary crisis. Because of its general language, however, that proclamation could serve as sufficient authority to use a substantial proportion of all the emergency statutes now on the books. Over the course of at least the last 40 years, then, Presidents have had available an enormous - seemingly expanding and never-ending - range of emergency powers. Indeed, at their fullest extent and during the height of a crisis, these "prerogative" powers appear to be virtually unlimited, confirming Locke's perceptions. Because Congress and the public are unaware of the extent of emergency powers, there has never been any notable congressional or public objection made to this state of affairs. Nor have the courts imposed significant limitations. During the New Deal, the Supreme Court initially struck down much of Roosevelt's emergency economic legislation (Schecter v. United States, 295 U.S. 495). However, political pressures, a change in personnel, and presidential threats of court-packing, soon altered this course of decisions (NLRB v. Jones & Lauqhlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1). Since 1987, the Court has been extremely reluctant to invalidate any congressional delegation of economic powers to the President. It appears that this will not change in the foreseeable future. In a significant case directly confronting the issue of wartime emergency powers, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (343 U.S. 579), the Court refused to allow the President to rely upon implied constitutional powers during a crisis. The action at issue involved presidential seizure of steel plants in a manner apparently directly at odds with congressional policy, Justice Black's plurality opinion specifically acknowledges that if Congress delegates powers to the President for use during an emergency those powers are absolutely valid within constitutional restraints on Congress' own power to do so. Concurring opinions appear to agree on this point. It should be noted, therefore, that all statutes in this compilation are precisely these kinds of specific congressional delegations of power. The 2,000-year-old problem of how a legislative body in a democratic republic may extend extraordinary powers for use by the executive during times of great crisis and dire emergency - but do so in ways assuring both that such necessary powers will be terminated immediately when the emergency has ended and that normal processes will be resumed - has not yet been resolved in this country. Too few are aware of the existence of emergency powers and their extent, and the problem has never been squarely faced.
B - SUMMARY VIEWS OF THE PRESENT STATUS A review of the laws passed since the first state of national emergency was declared in 1933, reveals a consistent pattern of lawmaking. It is a pattern showing that the Congress, through its own actions, transferred awesome magnitudes of power to the executive ostensibly to meet the problems of governing effectively in times of great crisis. Since 1933, Congress has passed or recodified over 470 significant statutes delegating to the President powers that had been Note 1: Ibid, p. 597. (6) the prerogative and responsibility of the Congress since the beginning of the Republic. No charge can be sustained that the Executive branch has usurped powers belonging to the Legislative branch; on the contrary, the transfer of power has been in accord with due process of normal legislative procedures. It is fortunate that at this time that, when the fears and tensions of the cold war are giving way to relative peace and detente is now national policy, Congress can assess the nature, quality, and effect of what has become known as emergency powers legislation. Emergency powers make up a relatively small but important body of statutes - some 470 significant provisions of law out of the total of tens of thousands that have been passed or recodified since 1933. But emergency powers laws are of such significance to civil liberties, to the operation of domestic and foreign commerce, and the general functioning of the U.S. Government, that, in microcosm, they reflect dominant trends in the political, economic, and judicial life in the United States. A number of conclusions can be drawn from the Special Committee's study and analysis of emergency powers laws now in effect. Congress has in most important respects, except for the final action of floor debate and the formal passage of bills, permitted the Executive branch to draft and in large measure to "make the laws." This has occurred despite the constitutional responsibility conferred on Congress by Article I Section 8 of the Constitution which states that it is Congress that "makes all Laws . . ." Most of the statutes pertaining to emergency powers were passed in times of extreme crisis. Bills drafted in the Executive branch were sent to Congress by the President and, in the case of the most significant laws that ate on the books, were approved with only the most perfunctory committee review and virtually no consideration of their effect on civil liberties or the delicate structure of the U.S. Government of divided powers. For example, the economic measures that were passed in 1933 pursuant to the proclamation of March 5, 1933, by President Roosevelt, asserting that a state of national emergency now existed, were enacted in the most turbulent circumstances. There was a total of only 8 hours of debate in both houses. There were no committee reports; indeed, only one copy of the bill was available an the floor. This pattern of hasty and inadequate consideration was repeated during World War II when another group of laws with vitally significant and far reaching implications was passed. It was repeated during the Korean war and, again, in most recent memory, during the debate on the Tonkin Gulf Resolution passed on August 6, 1064. On occasion, legislative history shows that during the limited debates that did take place, a few, but very few, objections were raised by Senators and Congressmen that expressed serious concerns about the lack of provision for congressional oversight. Their speeches raised great doubts about the wisdom of giving such open-ended authority to the President, with no practical procedural means to withdraw that authority once the time of emergency had passed. For example, one of the very first provisions passed in 1933 was the Emergency Banking Act based upon Section 5(b) of the Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917. The provisions gave to President Roosevelt, with the full approval of the Congress, the authority (7)
to control major aspects of the economy, an authority which had formerly been reserved to the Congress. A portion of that provision, still in force, is quoted here to illustrate the kind of open-ended authority Congress has given to the President during the past 40 years:
To cite two further examples: In the context of the war powers issue and the long debate of the past decade over national commitments, 10 U.S.C. 712 is of importance:
The Defense Department, in answer to inquiries by the Special Committee concerning this provision, has stated that it has only been used with regard to Latin America, and interprets its applicability as being limited to noncombatant advisers. However, the language of Section 712 is wide open to other interpretations. It could be construed as a way of extending considerable military assistance to any foreign country. Since Congress has delegated this power, arguments could be made against the need for further congressional concurrence in a, time of national emergency. The repeal of almost all of the Emergency Detention Act of 1950 was a constructive and necessary step, but the following provision remains: 18. U.S.C. 1383. Restrictions in military areas and zones.
18 U.S.C. 1383 does not appear on its face to be an emergency power. It was used as the basis for internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II. Although it seems to be cast as a permanent power, the legislative history of the section shows that the statute was intended as a World War II emergency power only, and was not to apply in "normal" peacetime circumstances. Two years ago, the Emergency Detention Act was repealed, yet 18 U.S.C. 1383 has almost the same effect. Another pertinent question among many, that the Special Committee's work has revealed, concerns the statutory authority for domestic surveillance by the FBI. According to some experts, the authority for domestic surveillance appears to be based upon an Executive Order issued by President Roosevelt during an emergency period. If it is correct that no firm statutory authority exists, then it is reasonable to suggest that the appropriate committees enact proper statutory authority for the FBI with adequate provision for oversight by Congress. What these examples suggest and what the magnitude of emergency powers affirm is that most of these laws do not provide for congressional oversight or termination. There are two reasons which can be adduced as to why this is so. First, few, if any, foresaw that the temporary states of emergency declared in 1938, 1939, 1941, 1950, 1970, and 1971 would become what are now regarded collectively as virtually permanent states of emergency (the 1939 and 1941 emergencies were terminated in 1952). Forty years can, in no way, be defined as a temporary emergency. Second, the various administrations who drafted these laws for a variety of reasons were understandably not concerned about providing for congressional review, oversight, or termination of these delegated power's which gave the President enormous powers and flexibility to use those powers. The intense anxiety and sense of crisis was contained in the rhetoric of Truman's 1950 proclamation:
(11) The heightened sense of crisis of the cold war so evident in Truman's proclamation has fortunately eased. The legislative shortcomings contained in this body of laws can be corrected on the basis of rational study and inquiry. In the view of the Special Committee, an emergency does not now exist. Congress, therefore, should act in the near future to terminate officially the states of national emergency now in effect. At the same time, the Special Committee is of the view that it is essential to provide the means for the Executive to act effectively in an emergency. It is reasonable to have a body of laws in readiness to delegate to the President extraordinary powers to use in times of real national emergency. The portion of the concurring opinion given by Justice Jackson in the Youngstown Steel case with regard to emergency powers provides sound and pertinent guidelines for the maintenance of such a body of emergency laws kept in readiness to be used in times of extreme crisis. Justice Jackson, supporting the majority opinion that the "President's power must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself" wrote:
With these guidelines and against the background of experience of the last 40 years, the task that remains for the Special Committee is to determine - in close cooperation with all the Standing Committees of the Senate and all Departments, Commissions, and Agencies of the Executive branch - which of the laws now in force might be of use in a future emergency. Most important, a legislative formula needs to be devised which will provide a regular and consistent procedure by which any emergency provisions are called into force. It will also be necessary to establish a means by which Congress can exercise effective oversight over such actions as are taken pursuant to a state of national emergency as well as providing a regular and consistent procedure for the termination of such grants of authority. 24-509 O - 73 - 3 (14) COMPILING THE TEXTS OF EMERGENCY POWER STATUTES Pursuant to S. Res. 9 of January 6, 1973, the U.S. Senate directed the Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency to study and investigate emergency powers legislation now in force. From the outset of its work, the Special Committee faced the problem of determining, with reasonable accuracy, the number, nature, and extent of emergency statutes passed by Congress since 1933 which delegate extraordinary powers to the President in time of crisis or impending catastrophe. It was evident, initially, that existing listings of executive emergency powers were either out-of-date or inadequate for the Special Committee's purposes. It became apparent, too, that the United States Government has been operating under an unrelieved state of emergency of 40 years' duration. During this period, an enormous body of laws dealing with severe economic crisis and America's response to three wars had been passed by Congress through an almost unnoticed process of gradual accretion. In the past, the only way to compile a catalog useful to Congress would have required going through every page of the 86 volumes of the Statutes-at-Large. Fortunately, the U.S. Code (1970 edition and one supplement) was put onto computer tapes by the United States Air Force in the so-called LITE System, which is located at a military facility in the State of Colorado. The Special Committee staff, working in conjunction with the Justice Department, the Library of Congress, and the General Accounting Office, devised several programs for computer searches. These programs were based on a wide spectrum of key words and phrases contained in typical provisions of law , which delegate extraordinary powers. Examples of some trigger words are "national emergency," "war," "national defense," "invasion," "insurrection," etc. These programs, designed to produce a computer printout of all provisions of the U.S. Code that pertain to a state of war or national emergency, resulted in several thousand citations. At this point, the Special Committee staff and the staff of the American Law Division, Library of Congress, went through the printouts, separated out all those provisions of the U.S, Code most relevant to war or national emergency, and weeded out those provisions of a trivial or extremely remote nature. Two separate teams worked on the computer printouts and the results were put together in a third basic list of U.S. Code citations. To determine legislative intent, the U.S. Code citations were then hand checked against the Statutes-at-Large, the Reports of Stand- (15) ing Committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and, where applicable, Reports of Senate and House Conferences. In addition, the laws passed since the publishing of the 1970 Code were checked and relevant citations were added to the master list. The compilation was then checked against existing official catalogs: That of the Department of Defense, "Digest of War and Emergency Legislation Affecting the Department of Defense"; that of the Once of Emergency Planning, "Guide to the Emergency Powers Conferred by Laws in Effect on January 1, 1969"; and, the 1962 House Judiciary Committee synopsis of emergency powers, "Provisions of Federal Law in Effect in Time of National Emergency." The task of compiling a catalog of emergency powers statutes, therefore, has been immeasurably assisted by use of computers, but computers could not replace the need for a systematic and very laborious hand search of all of the volumes of the U.S. Code, the Statutes-at-Large, and Senate and House Reports. The following compilation is intended to be used as a working list of the most relevant emergency provisions of the law. The Special Committee cannot be certain that every statute that could or may be called into use during a time of war or national emergency is in the following compilation. However, the Special Committee believes that the most significant provisions are herein cataloged. The compilation is organized as follows:
The appendix contains:
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