INS v. Chadha 462 U.S. 919 (1983) was a United States Supreme Court case holding that the "one-house veto" violated the constitutional separation of powers. Court citation is a standard system used in common law countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia to uniquely identify the location of past court cases in special series of books called reporters. ... 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C., (large image) The Supreme Court of the United States, located in Washington, D.C., is the highest court (see supreme court) in the United States; that is, it has ultimate judicial authority within the United States... Separation of powers is the democratic rule that the powers of a country or state have to be split between 3 organs: Executive (Government), Legislative (Parliament) and Judicial (Court). ...

Facts

Chadha was a foreign exhange student from Ohio with degrees in Political Science. His parents were of Indian nationality but he himself was born in Kenya. When his student visa expired he did not have a country to go to because neither India nor Kenya "wanted" him. The Supreme Court granted him asylum.

Issue

The constitutional question in the case hinged on the issue of whether Congress had the authority to exercise a legislative veto over executive agency decisions. Congress had delegated broad authority to the INS to make decisions regarding deportation proceedings, but had reserved the right to cancel some of these decisions through a resolution by either the House or the Senate. A congress is a gathering of people, especially a gathering for a political purpose. ... A legislative veto exists in governments that separate executive and legislative functions if actions by the executive can be rejected by the legislative. ... The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was a part of the United States Department of Justice which used to handle legal and illegal immigration and naturalization. ... The House of Representatives is the larger of two houses that make up the U.S. Congress, the other being the United States Senate. ... The United States Senate is the upper house of the U.S. Congress, smaller than the United States House of Representatives. ...

Result

The Court held that Congress could not exercise a legislative veto as it was a violation of the principles of bicameralism and the Presentment Clause; in the eyes of the justices, Congress was essentially passing new legislation (that overturned the INS decision) via resolution, without allowing the President to play his constitutionally assigned role in the legislative process. While innovative ways of sharing powers between the branches are useful, such methods must conform to the constitutional provisions which mandate the separation of powers. In government, bicameralism is the practice of having two legislative or parliamentary chambers. ... Presentment clause The Presentment clause (Article I, Section 7) is a clause in the United States Constitution that outlines how a bill may become law. ... The President of the United States (often abbreviated POTUS) is the head of state of the United States. ... Separation of powers is the democratic rule that the powers of a country or state have to be split between 3 organs: Executive (Government), Legislative (Parliament) and Judicial (Court). ...

Since the Chadha ruling a new line of originalist/textualist scholarship has suggested that the Supreme Court misconstrued the relevant constitutional text, particularly U.S. Const. Article I, Section 7, Clause 3. The position taken in the new scholarship is that the Constitution expressly permits statutory delegation to a single house of Congress, if and only if, both the statute and the single house resolution (which might function as a legislative veto) are separately presented to the President. If this is view is correct, then the statute litigated in Chadha was constitutional (as a matter of original meaning), but the House’s resolution remained unenforceable until presented to the President.

See generally Seth Barrett Tillman, A Textualist Defense of Article I, Section 7, Clause 3: Why Hollingsworth v. Virginia was Rightly Decided, and Why INS v. Chadha was Wrongly Reasoned, 83 TEX. L. REV. 1265 (2005), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=475204; Gary S. Lawson, Comment, Burning Down the House (and Senate): A Presentment Requirement for Legislative Subpoenas under the Orders, Resolutions, and Votes Clause, 83 TEX. L. REV. 1373 (2005); Seth Barrett Tillman, Reply, The Domain of Constitutional Delegations under the Orders, Resolutions and Votes Clause, 83 TEX. L. REV. 1389 (2005), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=658003.

See also DAVID F. FORTE ET AL., THE HERITAGE GUIDE TO THE CONSTITUTION §§ Article I, Section 7, Clause 3 & Article V (2005);DAVID BRIAN ROBERTSON, THE CONSTITUTION AND AMERICA’S DESTINY 219 n.46 (Cambridge University Press 2005); RONALD D. ROTUNDA & JOHN E. NOWAK, TREATISE ON CONSTITUTIONAL LAW: SUBSTANCE AND PROCEDURE § 10.8 [8] (3d ed. 2005); PETER M. SHANE & HAROLD H. BRUFF, SEPARATION OF POWERS LAW: CASES AND MATERIALS 176 n.1 (2d ed. 2005); JOHN R. VILE, THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1787: A COMPREHENSIVE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICA’S FOUNDING 621 & 949 (ABC-CLIO Press 2005).

Cf. Roger P. Alford, In Search of a Theory for Constitutional Comparativism, 52 UCLA L. REV. 639, 650 n.52 (2005); Roger P. Alford, Roper v. Simmons and Our Constitution in International Equipoise, 53 UCLA L. REV. 1, 10 n.46 (2005); Yvette Barksdale, Recent Articles of Interest, 30 ADMIN. & REG. LAW NEWS 25, 27 (2005); Jack Michael Beermann, Congressional Administration, Boston University School of Law Working Paper No. 05-10, at 71 n.198 (2005); Ezra Dodd Church, Technological Conservatism: How Information Technology Prevents the Law from Changing, 83 TEX. L. REV. 561, 589 n.220 (2004); Jide Nzelibe, A Positive Theory of the War Powers Constitution, Northwestern University Law & Economics Research Paper No. 05-03, at 20 n.62 (2005).

External link

• Complete ruling from findlaw.com