Mi Inbox (4,206) - j265@umbc.edu - UMBC Mail h B P United State v. Butler - POLI 230 Constitutional Law SP2024 - Perusall Per'usall@ > POLI 230 Constitutional Law SP2024 > Assignments United State v. Butler - Entirev @ o @4 Options v+ W All comments ~ o Get help ~ POLI 230 Const... X My Courses & Course home 2 My scores O Notifications # Notes & Add to my calendar (# Unenroll from course Content v Library v Assignments Chats o Groups ! Announcements General discussion One-on-One Hashtags @0 #3 #connection #definition #important #keypoint 1. Consistency within Butler. Having adopted the Hamiltonian position on the scope of the spending power, is the Court consistent in finding the act unconstitutional? Does Justice Roberts take the position that there are no judicially enforceable internal limitations on the spending powerthe courts will not determine whether an expenditure promotes the \"general welfare\"but that there are judicially enforceable federalism-based externallimitations on that power? What are those limits? Note Justice Stone's invocation of the legislature's \"sense of public responsibility.\" 2. Consistency with later decisions. In Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548 (1937), the Supreme Court upheld the validity of the federal unemployment compensation system. Under that system, employers paid a federal excise tax based on their employees' wages. If the employer also paid into a state unemployment fund that had been certified by the Secretary of the Treasury as meeting certain \"minimum criteria\" designed to assure financial stability and accountability, the employer received a credit for that amount, reducing its federal excise tax liability by up to 90 percent. This system, the Court concluded, did not \"[involve] the coercion of the States in contravention of the Tenth Amendment or of restrictions implicit in our federal form of government.\" In his opinion for the Court, Justice Cardozo emphasized the problems caused by the Great Depression: Despite unprecedented levels of unemployment, many states had held back from adopting unemployment insurance \"through alarm lest in laying such a toll upon their industries, they would place themselves in a position of economic disadvantage as compared with neighbors or competitors.\" The Court emphasized that a \"wide range of judgment is given to the several states as to the particular type of statute to be spread upon their books.\" And it found that Congress had acted permissibly in deciding to offer the credit only to taxpayers in states that had adopted a form of unemployment insurance approved by the federal government. Giving the federal credit without regard to the contents of a state plan would be \"manifestly futile in the absence of some assurance that the [state] law leading to the credit\" actually addressed the problems that concerned Congress. 3. Coercion and states' rights. Why is the state not coerced into participating in the unemployment system by fear that businesses will relocate to states that have qualifying unemployment systems? In Butler, Justice Stone said that \"Threat of loss, not hope of gain, is the essence of economic coercion.\" Which one is operating in Steward Machine Co. ? The difficulty of the questions turns on identifying a baseline set of \"entitlements\" held by stateshere, the set of activities in which the states and not the national government can engage. For a comprehensive discussion, see Kreimer, Allocational Sanctions: The Problem of Negative Rights in a Positive State, 132 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1293 (1984). For additional discussion, see Chapter 9 infra. @ app.perusall.com e @ judith Martinez ~ R Do % 0O Perusal].@ > POLI 230 Constitutional Law SP2024 Assignments United State v. Butler - Entirev &% ok POLI 230 Const... X My Courses & Course home 2 My scores O Notifications # Notes & Add to my calendar (# Unenroll from course Content Library > v Assignments Chats e Groups ! Announcements General discussion One-on-One Hashtags e0 #3 #connection #definition #important #keypoint Mi Inbox (4,206) - j265@umbc.edu - UMBC Mail h B P United State v. Butler - POLI 230 Constitutional Law SP2024 - Perusall *q Options ~ WV All comments ~ o Get help ~ United States v. Butler 297 U.S. 1 (1936) [The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 was designed to stabilize production in agriculture by assuring farmers that their products would be sold at a fair price. The act imposed a tax on processors of agricultural commodities such as cotton. The proceeds of the tax were to be used to subsidize farmers who agreed to restrict their production.] Mr . Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court.... There should be no misunderstanding as to the function of this court in such a case. It is sometimes said that the court assumes a power to overrule or control the action of the people's representatives. This is a misconception. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land ordained and established by the people. All legislation must conform to the principles it lays down. When an act of Congress is appropriately challenged in the courts as not conforming to the constitutional mandate the judicial branch of the Government has only one duty,to lay the article of the Constitution which is invoked beside the statute which is challenged and to decide whether the latter squares with the former. All the court does, or can do, is to announce its considered judgment upon the question. The only power it has, if such it may be called, is the power of judgment. This court neither approves nor condemns any legislative policy. Its delicate and difficult office is to ascertain and declare whether the legislation is in accordance with, or in contravention of, the provisions of the Constitution; and, having done that, its duty ends. The question is not what power the Federal Government ought to have but what powers in fact have been given by the people. [The] federal union is a government of delegated powers. It has only such as are expressly conferred upon it and such as are reasonably to be implied from those granted.... The clause thought to authorize the legislation [confers] upon the Congress power \"to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States....\" It is not contended that this provision grants power to regulate agricultural production upon the theory that such legislation would promote the general welfare....The view that the clause grants power to provide for the general welfare, independently of the taxing power, has never been authoritatively accepted.... Nevertheless the Government asserts that warrant is found in this clause for the adoption of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The argument is that Congress may appropriate and authorize the spending of moneys for the \"general welfare\"; that the phrase should be liberally construed to cover anything conducive to national welfare; that decision as to what will promote such welfare rests with Congress alone, and the courts may not review its determination; and finally that the appropriation under attack was in fact for the general welfare of the United States.... & app.perusall.com e judith Martinez ~ R Do % 0O