Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer · ¶51

The question before the Court comes in this setting. Congress has frequently — at least 16 times since 1916— specifically provided for executive seizure of production, transportation, communications, or storage facilities. In every case it has qualified this grant of power with limitations and safeguards. This body of enactments— summarized in tabular form in Appendix I, post, p. 615— demonstrates that Congress deemed seizure so drastic a power as to require that it be carefully circumscribed whenever the President was vested with this extraordinary authority. The power to seize has uniformly been given only for a limited period or for a defined emergency, or has been repealed after a short period. Its exercise has been restricted to particular circumstances such as “time of war or when war is imminent,” the needs of “public safety” or of “national security or defense,” or “urgent and…

U. S. Reports, bound volume
U. S. Reports, volume 343, at 579 (Library of Congress) · transcription: Caselaw Access Project
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