Congressional Power

Congressional Power Versus Presidential Duty to the Law

The Court’s 1838 decision in Kendall v. United States ex rel. Stokes,1 shed more light on congressional power to mandate actions by executive branch officials. The United States owed Stokes money, and when Postmaster General Kendall, at Jackson’s instigation, refused to pay it, Congress passed a special act ordering payment. Kendall, however, still proved noncompliant, whereupon Stokes sought and obtained a mandamus in the United States circuit court for the District of Columbia, and on appeal this decision was affirmed by the Supreme Court. Although Kendall, like Marbury v. Madison, involved the question of the responsibility of a head of a department for the performance of a ministerial duty, the discussion by counsel before the Court and the Court’s own opinion covered the entire subject of the relation of the President to his subordinates in the performance by them of statutory duties. The lower court had asserted that the duty of the President under the faithful execution clause gave him no other control over the officer than to see that he acts honestly, with proper motives, but no power to construe the law and see that the executive action conforms to it. Counsel for Kendall attacked this position vigorously, relying largely upon statements by Hamilton, Marshall, James Wilson, and Story having to do with the President’s power in the field of foreign relations.

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The Court rejected the implication with emphasis. There are, it pointed out, “certain political duties imposed upon many officers in the executive department, the discharge of which is under the direction of the President. But it would be an alarming doctrine, that Congress cannot impose upon any executive officer any duty they may think proper, which is not repugnant to any rights secured and protected by the Constitution; and in such cases the duty and responsibility grow out of and are subject to the control of the law, and not to the direction of the President. And this is emphatically the case, where the duty enjoined is of a mere ministerial character.” 2 In short, the Court recognized the underlying question of the case to be whether the President’s duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” made it constitutionally impossible for Congress ever to entrust the construction of its statutes to anybody but the President, and it answered this in the negative.

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References

This text about Congressional Power is based on “The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation”, published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.

Notes

[Footnote 1] 37 U.S. (12 Pet.) 524 (1838).
[Footnote 2] 37 U.S. (12 Pet.) at 610.

Further Reading

• John P Roche and Leonard W Levy, The Congress (New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964)
• Donald A. Ritchie, The Congress of the United States: A Student Companion (2006)
• Robert L Peabody; et al, To enact a law: Congress and campaign financing (New York, Praeger, 1972)
• Daniel M Berman, A bill becomes a law: Congress enacts civil rights legislation (New York, Macmillan, 1966)
• Jacob R. Straus, Party and Procedure in the United States Congress (2012)
• N. O. Kura, Congress of the United States: Powers, Structure, and Procedures (2001)
• Robert E. Dewhirst and ‎John David Rausch, Encyclopedia of the United States Congress (2009)