# Field v. Clark

> Supreme Court of the United States · February 29, 1892 · 143 U.S. 649

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9841790

## Case

- **Full name:** Field v. Clark; Boyd v. United States; Sternbach v. United States
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** February 29, 1892
- **Citations:** 143 U.S. 649; 12 S. Ct. 495; 36 L. Ed. 294; 1892 U.S. LEXIS 2046
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurring in part by Lamae
- **Judges:** Hablan, Lamae, Fullee
- **Cited by:** 774 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9841790

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that “the spectacle of examination of [congressional proceedings by the courts]” would “subordinate [ ] the legislature and disregard[ ] that coequal position in our system of the three departments of government” (internal quotation marks omitted)
- explaining that "the spectacle of examination of [congressional proceedings by the courts]" would "subordinate[] the legislature and disregard[] that coequal position in our system of the three departments of government" (internal quotation marks omitted)
- discussing Act of Mar. 6, 1866, ch. 12, § 2, 14 Stat. 4, which permitted the President to "declare the provisions of this act to be inoperative" and lift import restrictions on foreign cattle and hides upon a showing that such importation would not endanger U. S. cattle
- discussing Act of Mar. 6,1866, ch. 12, §2,14 Stat. 4, which permitted the President to “declare the provisions of this act to be inoperative” and lift import restrictions on foreign cattle and hides upon a showing that such importation would not endanger U. S. cattle
- holding that an enrolled bill is conclusive evidence of its validity; refus- ing to evaluate the process or rules by which it reached that point

## Opinion text

Me. Justice Lamae,
(with whom concurred Me. Chief Justice Fullee,)
dissenting from the ooinion but concurring in the judgments of the court.
The Chief Justice and myself concur in the judgment just announced. But the proposition maintained in the opinion, that the third section, known as the reciprocity provision, is valid and constitutional legislation, does not command our assent, and we desire to state very briefly the ground of our dissent from it. We think that this particular provision is repugnant to the first section of the first article of the Constitution of the United States, which provides that “all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” That no part of this legislative power can be delegated by Congress to any other department of the government, executive or judicial, is an axiom in constitutional law, and is universally recognized as a principle essential to the integrity and maintenance, of' the system of government ordained by the Constitution. The legislative power must remain in the organ where it is lodged by that instrument. We think that the section in question does delegate legislative power to the executive department, and also commits to that department' matters belonging to the treaty-making power, in violation of paragraph two of the second section of article two of the Constitution. It reads thus:
“ § 3. That with a view to secure reciprocal trade with, countries producing the following articles, and for this purpose, on and after the first day of January, eighteen hundred and ninety- *698 two, whenever, and so often as the President shall be satisfied that the government of any country producing and exporting sugars, molasses, coffee, tea and hides, raw and uncured, or any of such articles, imposes duties or other exactions upon the agricultural or other products of the United States, which in view of the free introduction of such sugar, molasses, coffee, tea and hides into the United States he may deem to be reciprocally unequal and unreasonable, he shall have the power and it shall be his duty to suspend, by proclamation' to that effect, the provisions of this act relating to the free introduction of such sugar, molasses, coffee, tea and hides, the production of such country, for suchtime as he shall deem just, and in such case and during such suspension duties shall be levied, collected and paid upon sugar, molasses, coffee, tea and hides, the product of or exported from such designated country as follows, namely.” 26 Stat. 612 .
We do not think that legislation of this character is sustained by any decision of this court, or by precedents in congressional legislation numerous enough to be properly considered as the practice of the government. One of the instances referred to, as legislation analogous to this section, is that embodied in the acts of Congress of 1809 and 1810 known as the “non-intercourse acts,” pronounced by this court to be valid in the case of The Brig Aurora, 1 Cranch, 383 . The act of March 1, 1809, forbidding any importation after May 20, 1809, from Great Britain or France, provided that “ the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, authorized, in case either France or Great Britain shall so revoke or modify her edicts, as that they shall cease to'violate the neutral commerce of the United State's, to declarp the same by proclamation,” after which the trade suspended by that act and the act laying an embargo could be renewed with the nation so doing. 2 Stat. 528 , c. 24, § 11. That act having expired, Congress, on the first of May, 1810, passed an act, ( 2 Stat. 605 , c. 39, § 4,; which enacted “ that in case either Great Britain or France shall, before the third day of March next, so revoke or modify her edicts as that they shall cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States, which fact *699 the President of the United States shall declare by proclamation, and if the other nation shall ndt, within three months thereafter, so revoke or modify her edicts in like manner,” the restrictions of the embargo act, “shall, from and after the expiration of three months from the date of the proclamation aforesaid, be revived and have full force and effect, so far as relates to . ... the nation thus refusing or neglecting to modify her edicts in the manner'aforesaid. And the. restrictions imposed by this act shall, from the date of such procla-' mation, cease and be discontinued in relation to the nation revoking or modifying her decrees in the manner aforesaid.”
These enactments, in our opinion; transferred no legislative power to the President. The legislation was purely contingent. It provided for an ascertainment by the President of an event in the future, an event defined in the act and directed to be evidenced by his proclamation. It 'also prescribed the consequences which were to follow upon that proclamation, Such proclamation was wholly in the nature of an executive act, a prescribed mode of ascertainment, which involved no exercise by the President of what belonged to the law-making power. The supreme .will of Congress would have been enforced whether the event provided for had or had not happened, either in the Continuance of the restrictions, on-the one hand, or on the other, in their suspension.
But the purpose and effect of the section now under consideration are radically different. It does not, as was provided in the statutes of 1809 and 1810, entrust the President with the ascertainment of a fact therein. defined upon which the law is to go into operation. It goes farther than that, and deputes to the President the power to suspend another section in the same act whenever “he may deem” the, action of any foreign nation producing and exporting the articles named in that section to be “ reciprocally unequal and unreasonable and it further deputes to him the power to continue that suspension and to impose revenue duties on the articles named “ for such time as he may deem just.” This certainly extends to the executive the exercise of those discretionary powers' which the Constitution has vested.in the law-making depart *700 ment. It unquestionably -vests in the President the power to regulate our conjmerce with all foreign nations which produce sugar, tea, coffee, molasses, hides or any of such articles; and to impose revenue duties upon them for a length of time limited solely by his discretion, whenever he deems the revenue system or policy of any nation in which those articles are produced reciprocally unequal and’ unreasonable, in its operation upon the products of this country.
These features of this section are, in our opinion, in palpable violation of the Constitution, of the United States, and serve to distinguish' it from the legislative precedents which are relied' upon to sustain it, as the practice of the government. None, of these legislative precedents,' save the one above referred to, have, as yet, undergone review by this court or •been sustained by its decision. And if there be any congressional legislation which may be construed as delegating to the President the power to suspend any law exempting any importations from duty, or to reimpose revenue duties on them, upon ■ his own judgment as to what constitutes in the revenue policy of other countries a fair and reasonable reciprocity, such legislative precedents cannot avail as authority against a clear and undoubted principle of the Constitution. We say revenue policy, because the phrase “ agricultural or other products of the United States” is comprehensive,-and embraces our manufacturing and mining as well as agricultural products, all of which interests are thus entrusted to the discretion of the President, in the adjustment of trade relations with other countries, upon a basis of reciprocity.
Whilst, however, we cannot agree to the proposition that this particular section is valid and constitutional, we do not regard it as such an essential part of the Tariff Act as to invalidate all its other provisions; and we therefore concur in the judgment of this court affirming the judgments of the court below in the several cases..

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9841790. Public record. Not legal advice.