Federal Power Act

“ The legislative powers are vested in Congress, and are to be exercised by them uncontrolled by any other department, except the Constitution has qualified it otherwise. The Constitution has qualified the legislative power by authorizing the President to object to any act it may pass—requiring, in this case, two thirds of both houses to concur in making a law; but still the absolute legislative power is vested in the Congress, with this qualification alone. ”

“ The states are obliged to act in concert on most questions involving the nation as a whole, but the Federal Constitution safeguards the rights of the states by reserving to them all powers not specifically delegated to the Federal government. Second, in both Federal and state governments, power is still further distributed among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches in such a way that each branch constitutes a check upon the other two. ”

“ Though the Federal Government is one of limited powers, the people possess all governmental powers; and these are spoken of as powers delegated and powers reserved. So far as these are reserved to the people, they may be exercised either through the Federal Government or the State. And the Federal Government, though limited in its powers, is restricted in the subjects upon which it can act, rather than in the quantum of power it can exercise over those matters within its jurisdiction. ”

“ The legislature of the United States shall have power to pass all laws which they shall judge necessary to the common defence and general welfare of the Union. But no bill, resolution, or act, of the Senate and Assembly shall have the force of a law until it shall have received the assent of the President, or of the Vice-President when exercising the powers of the President ”

“ Little aid can be derived from the vague and illusory but often repeated formula that Congress 'by occupying the field' has excluded from it all state legislation. Every Act of Congress occupies some field, but we must know the boundaries of that field before we can say that it has precluded a state from the exercise of any power reserved to it by the Constitution. To discover the boundaries we look to the federal statute itself, read in the light of its constitutional setting and its legislative history. ”

“ Where a federal agency is authorized to invoke an overriding federal power except in certain prescribed situations and then to leave the problem to traditional state control, the existence of federal authority to act should appear affirmatively and not rest on inference alone. ”

“ There is always a centre of power: where in this system is that centre? in whose hands is self-sufficient authority lodged, and through what agencies does that authority speak and act? The answers one gets to these and kindred questions from authoritative manuals of constitutional exposition are not satisfactory, chiefly because they are contradicted by self-evident facts. It is said that there is no single or central force in our federal scheme; and so there is not in the federal scheme, but only a balance of powers and a nice adjustment of interactive checks, as all the books say. ”

“ I do not understand the Court to suggest that the Federal Power Act endowed the Commission and the Court of Appeals with authority to decide any issues of state law if such law were deemed controlling, or that had the Court of Appeals undertaken to do so, such a determination would have foreclosed re-examination of such a decision in other proceedings. ”

“ The defendants are not charged with violating the latter section.
[7] The Constitution has explicit protections against excessive concentration of power in the federal government. Power is allocated among the federal government and the states by specifying those powers the Congress might exercise and by emphasizing in the tenth amendment that undelegated powers were reserved to the states or respectively to the people. Accordingly, Congress has authority to act only with respect to the powers specified in the Constitution. ”

“ For when the question is whether a Federal act overrides a state law, the entire scheme of the statute must, of course, be considered, and that which needs must be implied is of no less force than that which is expressed. If the purpose of the act cannot otherwise be accomplished-if its operation within its chosen field else must be frustrated and its provisions be refused their natural effect-the state law must yield to the regulation of Congress within the sphere of its delegated power. ”

“ Congress may use its spending power to create incentives for States to act in accordance with federal policies. But when "pressure turns into compulsion," ibid., the legislation runs contrary to our [p578] system of federalism. " [T] he Constitution simply does not give Congress the authority to require the States to regulate." New York, 505 U.S., at 178. That is true whether Congress directly commands a State to regulate or indirectly coerces a State to adopt a federal regulatory system as its own. ”

“ The only mode that I can think of, for qualifying it, is to vest a power somewhere, in each State, capable of giving their acts a limited operation, until the sense of Congress can be known. To those who have not sufficiently examined the nature of our Federal System, and the causes of its present weakness and disorders, this curb upon the State Legislatures may perhaps appear an improper attempt to acquire a dangerous and unnecessary power. ”

“ Strictly speaking, then, the Constitution allows no implication in favor of the federal government, in any case whatever. Every power which it can properly exert is a granted power. All these are enumerated in the Constitution, and nothing can be constitutionally done, beyond that enumeration, unless it be done as a means of executing some one of the enumerated powers. These means are granted, not implied; they are given as the necessary incidents of the power itself, or, more properly speaking, as component parts of it, because the power would be imperfect, nugatory and useless, without them. ”

“ To hold that these and other arrangements are beyond the power of the States and Federal Government because there is no specific empowering provision in the United States Constitution would be to take an unwarrantedly constricted view of state and national powers and would hobble the effective functioning of our federalism. Diffusion of power has its corollary of diffusion of responsibilities with its stimulus to cooperative effort in devising ways and means for making the federal system work. ”

“ The requisitions of Congress are binding on the states, though, from the imbecility of their nature, they cannot be enforced. The same power is intended by the Constitution. The only difference between them is, that Congress is, by this plan, to impose the taxes on the people, whereas, by the Confederation, they are laid by the states. The amount to be raised, and the power given to raise it, is the same in principle. The mode of raising only is different, and this difference is founded on the necessity of giving the government that energy without which it cannot exist. ”

“ If Congress may assert its authority in this instance, from the necessity of the case, and be itself the judge of that necessity, when no authority is given by the instrument, which expressly declares that all powers not granted by it are reserved, where are we to find a limit, and why may not that body assert itself in any number of instances, until, at length, the rights of the States are wholly absorbed by the overmastering power of the Federal Government? ”

“ The Court's distinction is untenable. The clear statement rule is not a mere canon of statutory interpretation. Instead, it derives from the Constitution itself. The rule protects the balance of power between the States and the Federal Government struck by the Constitution. Although the Eleventh Amendment spells out one aspect of that balance of power, the principle of federalism underlying the Amendment pervades the constitutional structure: The Constitution gives Congress only limited power to govern the Nation; the States retain power to govern locally. ”

“ Whereas the powers granted under the proposed Constitution are the gift of the people, and every power not granted thereby remains with them, and at their will,—no right, therefore, of any denomination, can be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified, by the Congress, by the Senate or House of Representatives, acting in any capacity, by the President, or any department or officer of the United States, except in those instances in which power is given by the Constitution for those purposes ”

“ From this record of the pains taken by the Congress to make clear the respective responsibilities of federal and state authorities, we conclude that power was given the Federal Power Commission by section 203 to regulate the present transaction. ”

“ There is not one government on the face of the earth, so far as I recollect—there is not one in the United States—in which provision is made for a particular authority to determine the limits of the constitutional division of power between the branches of the government. In all systems, there are points which must be adjusted by the departments themselves, to which no one of them is competent. ”

“ The States, on the contrary, have no motive to encroach on the federal government, and no power to do so, even if they desired it. In order, therefore, to preserve the just balance between them, we should incline, in every doubtful case, in favor of the States; confident that the federal government has always the inclination, and always the means, to maintain itself in all its just powers. ”

“ To give full force to this objection, let it be supposed for a moment that indefinite power should be given to the general legislature, and the states reduced to corporations dependent on the general legislature,—why should it follow that the general government would take from the states any branch of their power, as far as its operation was beneficial, and its continuance desirable to the people? ”

“ Their regulations must ever interfere with each other, and perpetually disgrace and distract the Federal Councils. I must confess, I view the power of revision and of a negative as the corner stone of any reform we can attempt, and that its exercise by Congress will be as safe as it is useful. In a Government constituted as this is, there can be no abuse of it.—The proceedings of the States which merely respect their local concerns, will always be passed as matters of form, and objections only arise where they shall endeavor to contravene the Federal Authority. ”

“ In my view this promotes rather than undermines the basic policy of avoiding excess concentration of power in government, federal or state, which underlies our concepts of federalism." 380 U.S., at 414. ”

“ What is absolutely clear, affirmed by the text of the 1789 Constitution, by the Tenth Amendment ratified in 1791, and by innumerable cases of ours in the 220 years since, is that there are structural limits upon federal power—upon what it can prescribe with respect to private conduct, and upon what it can impose upon the sovereign States. ”

“ The independent power of the States also serves as a check on the power of the Federal Government: "By denying any one government complete jurisdiction over all the concerns of public life, federalism protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power." ”

“ It is the production of the people, and the property of the people. It is their shield against the abuse of powers, as well as against the usurpation of powers, both by Congress and the judges. Your powers are limited. All legislative powers are granted to Congress, and all judicial powers are granted to the judges. You have, therefore, the power to enact laws, but no power to sit in judgment upon those laws. It is expressly and exclusively given to the judges to construe the laws, and to decide upon their constitutionality. ”