Law Commons^™

The Constitutionality Of Appropriations Transfer Authority Under The Nondelegation Doctrine, Shelby Begany Telle

Catholic University Law Review

Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution provides the Legislative Branch with the power of the purse by granting it the exclusive authority to designate how federal dollars may be spent via appropriations laws. Congress often includes transfer authority, which provides Executive Branch recipients of appropriations the ability to shift funds from one budget account to another. Allowing an agency to transfer funds from one non-specific appropriation to another is arguably an unconstitutional abdication of the Legislative Branch’s exclusive power over the purse strings.

Appropriations transfers are unconstitutional under the nondelegation doctrine. Certain attempts to alleviate these nondelegation concerns …

Laws As Treaties?: The Constitutionality Of Congressional-Executive Agreements, John C. Yoo

Michigan Law Review

Only twice in the last century, in 1919 with the Treaty of Versailles, and two years ago with the comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, has the Senate rejected a significant treaty sought by the President. In both cases, the international agreement received support from a majority of the Senators, but failed to reach the two-thirds supermajority required by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution. The failure of the Versailles Treaty resulted in a shattering defeat for President Wilson's vision of a new world order, based on collective security and led by the United States. Rejection of the Test-Ban Treaty amounted …

The Treaty Power And American Federalism, Curtis A. Bradley

Michigan Law Review

For much of this century, American foreign affairs law has assumed that there is a sharp distinction between what is foreign and what is domestic, between what is external and what is internal. This assumption underlies a dual regime of constitutional law, in which federal regulation of foreign affairs is subject to a different, and generally more relaxed, set of constitutional restraints than federal regulation of domestic affairs. In what is perhaps its most famous endorsement of this proposition, the Supreme Court stated in 1936 that "the federal power over external affairs [is] in origin and essential character different from …