So, can Biden nationalize US oil companies because they won't pump more oil?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

6. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer

I am not a lawyer. This is not an obscure ruling.

1952 steel strike

The 1952 steel strike was a strike by the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) against U.S. Steel (USS) and nine other steelmakers. The strike was scheduled to begin on April 9, 1952, but US President Harry Truman nationalized the American steel industry hours before the workers walked out. The steel companies sued to regain control of their facilities. On June 2, 1952, in a landmark decision, the US Supreme Court ruled in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), that the President lacked the authority to seize the steel mills.

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Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer

Argued: May 12–13, 1952
Decided: June 2, 1952
Holding: The President did not have the inherent authority to seize private property in the absence of either specifically enumerated authority under Article Two of the Constitution or statutory authority conferred on him by Congress.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), also commonly referred to as the Steel Seizure Case or the Youngstown Steel case, was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision that limited the power of the President of the United States to seize private property. The case served as a check on the most far-reaching claims of executive power at the time and signaled the Court's increased willingness to intervene in political questions.

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Majority opinion

Justice Black wrote for the majority opinion that was delivered exactly three weeks after the oral hearing on June 2. Black took, as he often did, an absolutist view by holding that the President had no power to act except in those cases that are expressly or implicitly authorized by the Constitution or an Act of Congress. Black wrote that the President's role in law-making is solely to recommend or veto laws. He cannot overtake Congress's role to create new laws.[4]

Concurring opinions

William O. Douglas

Douglas took a similarly-absolutist approach to the President's assertion of inherent power to cope with a national emergency.

Felix Frankfurter

Frankfurter avoided the sweeping condemnation of the administration's claims that Black and Douglas had offered. While he would not rule out the possibility that the President might acquire the power to take certain actions by a long course of conduct that was unobjected to by Congress, he found the statutory history persuasive evidence that Congress had not acquiesced, much less authorized, seizure of private property in the absence of a formal declaration of war.

Robert Jackson

Jackson's opinion took a similarly flexible approach to the issue by eschewing any fixed boundaries between the powers of Congress and the President. He divided Presidential authority towards Congress into three categories (in descending order of legitimacy):

• Cases in which the President was acting with express or implied authority from Congress
• Cases in which Congress had thus far been silent, referred to as a "zone of twilight"
• Cases in which the President was defying congressional orders ( the "third category" )

Jackson's framework would influence future Supreme Court cases on the president's powers and the relation between Congress and the presidency. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett elaborated during her Supreme Court nomination hearings in October 2020 the core content of Justice Jackson's concurring opinion:

In his concurring opinion in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring), Justice Jackson laid out the “familiar tripartite scheme” that the Supreme Court has since called “the accepted framework for evaluating executive action”:

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Medellin v. Texas, 552 U.S. 491, 524–25 (2008) (quoting Youngstown, 343 U.S. at 635-38).

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