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that "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed"; and that he "shall be Commander
in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." [Ibid. at 587.]
Even though "theater of war" be an expanding concept, we cannot with faithfulness to our
constitutional system hold that the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces has the ultimate
power as such to take possession of private property in order to keep labor disputes from
stopping production. This is a job for the Nation's lawmakers, not for its military authorities.
Nor can the seizure order be sustained because of the several constitutional provisions
that grant executive power to the President. In the framework of our Constitution, the
President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to
be a lawmaker. The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the
recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad. And the
Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to
execute. The first section of the first article says that "All legislative Powers herein granted
shall be vested in a Congress of the United States. . . ." After granting many powers to the
Congress, Article I goes on to provide that Congress may "make all Laws which shall be
necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers
vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or
Officer thereof."
The President's order does not direct that a congressional policy be executed in a manner
prescribed by Congress--it directs that a presidential policy be executed in a manner prescribed
by the President. The preamble of the order itself, like that of many statutes, sets out reasons why
the President believes certain policies should be adopted, proclaims these policies as rules of