Trump v. Slaughter · ¶50

What these events revealed, Chief Justice Taft wrote, was not Presidential “acquiescence” but resistance, a consistent rejection of “the validity of such legislation” as incompatible with “the legislative action of 1789.” Id., at 172– 173. At issue in Myers, then, as the Chief Justice saw it, was whether “to set aside” the First Congress’s “construction, thus buttressed, and adopt an adverse view,” contrary to the Constitution’s text, history, and structure. Id., at 175. The Court refused to do so. It hewed instead to the “constitutional construction . . . reached by the First Congress of the United States . . . and acquiesced in by the whole Government for three-quarters of a century.” Id., at 176. Any law to the contrary, the Court concluded, was “in violation of the Constitution, and invalid.” Ibid.

slip opinion, revised 7/07/26
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