Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. V. Sawyer Analysis

In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer which discussed the issue of inherent presidential power; the Supreme Court ruled that the President did not have the inherent authority to seize private property without authority given from Congress. In Justice Black’s opinion, he makes it clear that even if the president had the power to take over the steel mill he needs to have a congressional statute and it can not be used to settle labor disputes even if they were to disrupt the economy as the president argued. He also says that the seizure cannot be justified due to the president being Commander in Chief by saying that “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.” He even goes a step further in saying that the Executive’s job to make sure that laws are faithfully executed …show more content…
Based on the reasons that the government provided and since Congress had not proposed any legislation that would have allowed the president to seize the mill the court made the decision they did. On the other hand in Justice Vinson’s dissent he argued that the president was well within his job to seize the mill as it was only going to be temporary, if he had not the entire steel industry on which the war machine is reliant on would come to a halt and that the President had even alerted Congress that he had seized it and was leaving it up to them to decide if he could continue or if he needed to