Case 1.2 Constitutional Integrity: Immigration and Naturalization service v. Chadha

An immigration judge suspended an alien’s deportation pursuant to 244(c) (1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The United States House of Representatives passed a resolution vetoing the suspension pursuant to 244 (c) (2) of the Act which authorizes one House of Congress to invalidate the decision of the executive branch to allow a particular deportable alien to remain in the United States. The immigration judge reopened the deportation proceedings to implement the House order, and the alien was ordered deported. The Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed the alien’s appeal, holding that it had no power to declare unconstitutional an act of Congress. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held the House was without constitutional authority to order the alien’s deportation and that 244 (c) (2) violated the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers.
On appeal, the United States Supreme Court affirmed. In an opinion by Burger, Ch. J., joined by Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens, and O’Connor, JJ., it was held that the legislative veto provision in 244 (c) (2) was unconstitutional since the one-house veto was legislative in purpose and effect and subject to procedures set out in Article 1 of the Constitution requiring the passage by a majority of both Houses and presentment to the President.

Opinion
Chief Justice Burger delivered the opinion of the Court.

I

Chadha is an East Indian who was born in Kenya and holds a British passport. He was lawfully admitted to the United Sates in 1966 on a nonimmigrant student visa. His visa expired on June 30, 1972. On October 11, 1973, the District Director of Immigration and Naturalization Service ordered Chadha to show cause why he should not be deported for having “remained in the United States for a longer time than permitted.” … Pursuant to 242(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act …a deportation hearing was held before an Immigration Judge on January 11, 1974. Chadha conceded that he was deportable for overstaying his visa and the hearing was adjourned to enable him to file an application for suspension of deportation…
After Chadha submitted his application for suspension of deportation, the deportation hearing was resumed on February 7, 1974. On the basis of evidence adduced at the hearing, affidavits submitted with the application, and the results of a character investigation conducted by the INS, the Immigration Judge, on June 25, 1974, ordered that Chadha’s deportation be suspended. The Immigration Judge found that Chadha met the requirements of 244 (a)(1): he had resided continuously in the United States for over seven years, was of good moral character, and would suffer “extreme hardship” if deported.
Pursuant to 244(c)(1) of the Act, …the Immigration Judge suspended Chadha’s deportation and a report of the suspension was transmitted to Congress…[in the form of a recommendation by the Attorney General that Chadha’s deportation be suspended].
Once the Attorney General’s recommendation for the suspension of Chadha’s deportation was conveyed to Congress, Congress had the power under 244(c)(20 of the Act,…to veto the Attorney General’s determination that Chadha should not be deported. Section 244(c)(2) provides:

“if during the session of the Congress at which a case is reported, or prior to the close of the session of the Congress next following the session at which a case is reported, either the Senate or the House of Representatives passes a resolution stating in substance that it does not favor the suspension of such deportation, the Attorney General shall thereupon deport such alien or authorize the alien’s voluntary departure at his own expense under the order of deportation in the manner provided by law. If, within the time above specified, neither the Senate nor the House of Representatives shall pas such a resolution, the Attorney General shall cancel deportation proceedings.”

The June 25, 1974, order of Immigration Judge suspending Chadha’s deportation remained outstanding as a valid order for a year and a half. For reasons not disclosed by the record, Congress did not exercise the veto authority reserved to it under 244(c)(2) until the first sessions of the 94th Congress.

II

After the House veto of the Attorney General’s decision to allow Chadha to remain in the United States, the Immigration Judge reopened the deportation proceedings to implement the House order deporting Chadha. Chadha moved to terminate the proceedings on the ground that 244(c)(2) is unconstitutional. The Immigration Judge held that he had no authority to rule on the constitutional validity of 244(c) (2). On November 8, 1976, Chadha was ordered deported pursuant to the House action.
Chadha appealed the deportation order to the Board of Immigration Appeals, again contending that 244(c) (2) is unconstitutional. The Board held that it had ‘no power to declare unconstitutional an act of Congress” and Chadha’s appeal was dismissed…
Pursuant to 106(a) of the Act, …Chadha filed a petition for review of the deportation order in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Immigration and Naturalization Service agreed with Chadha’s position before the Court of Appeals and joined him in arguing that 244(c) 92) is unconstitutional. In light of the importance of the question, the Court of Appeals invited both the Senate and the House of Representatives to file briefs amici curiae.
After full briefing and oral argument, the Court of Appeals held that the House was without constitutional authority to order Chadha’s deportation; accordingly it directed the Attorney General “to cease and desist from taking any steps to deport this alien based upon the resolution enacted by the House of Representatives.” … The essence of its holding was that 244(c) (2) violates the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers.
We granted certiorari…

III-A

We turn now to the question whether action of one House of Congress under 244(c) (2) violates strictures of the Constitution. We begin, of course, with the presumption that the challenged statute is valid. Its wisdom is not the concern of the courts; if a challenged action does not violate the Constitution, it must be sustained…
By the same token, the fact that a given law or procedure is efficient, convenient, and useful in facilitating functions of government, standing alone, will not save it if it is contrary to the Constitution. Convenience and efficiency are not the primary objectives-or the hallmarks-of democratic government and our inquiry is sharpened rather than blunted by the fact that congressional veto provisions are appearing with increasing frequency in statutes which delegate authority to executive and independent agencies:

“Since 1932, when the first veto provision was enacted into law, 295 congressional veto-type procedures have been inserted in 196 different statutes as follows: from 1932 to 1939, five statutes were affected; form 1940-49, nineteen statutes; between 1950-59, thirty-four statutes; and from 1960-69, forty-nine. From the year 1970 through 1975, at least one hundred sixty-three such provisions were included in eighty-nine laws.” …

Justice White undertakes to make a case for the proposition that the one-House veto is a useful “political invention,” …[dissent] and we need not challenge that assertion. We can even concede this utilitarian argument although the long-range political wisdom of this “invention” is arguable…But Policy arguments supporting even useful “political inventions” are subject to the demands of the Constitution which defines powers and, with respect to this subject, sets out just how those powers are to be exercised.
Explicit and unambiguous provisions of the Constitution prescribe and define the respective functions of the Congress and of the Executive in the legislative process. Since the precise terms of those familiar provisions are critical to the resolution of this case, we set them out verbatim. Article I provides:

“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United State, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”
“Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States…”
“Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.”

These provisions of Art I are integral parts of the constitutional design for the separation of powers. We have recently noted that” [t]he principle of separation of powers was not simply an abstract generalization in the minds of the Framers: it was woven into the document that they drafted in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787.” …
Just as we relied on the textual provision of Art II, to vindicate the principle of separation of powers in Buckley we see that the purposes underlying the Presentment Clauses, Art I, and the bicameral requirement of Art I, guide our resolution of the important question presented in these cases. The very structure of the articles delegating and separating powers under Arts I, II, and III exemplifies the concept of separation of powers, and we now turn to Art I.

B- The Presentment of Clauses

The records of the Constitutional Convention reveal that the requirement that all legislation be presented to the president before becoming law was uniformly accepted by the Framers. Presentment to the President and the Presidential veto were considered so imperative that the draftsmen took special pains to assure that these requirements could not be circumvented. During the Final debate on Art I, James Madison expressed concern that it might easily be evaded by the simple expedient of calling a proposed law a “resolution” or “vote” rather than a “bill.”…
As a consequence, Art I, was added…
The decision to provide the President with a limited and qualified power to nullify proposed legislation by veto was based on the profound conviction of the Framers that the powers conferred on Congress were the powers to be most carefully circumscribed. It is beyond doubt that law-making was a power to be shared by both houses and the President. In the Federal No. 73,…Hamilton focused on the President’s role in making laws:

“If even no propensity had ever discovered itself in the legislative body to invade the rights of the Executive, the rules of just reasoning and theoretic propriety would of themselves teach us that the one ought not to be left to the mercy of the other, but ought to possess a constitutional and effectual power of self-defence…”

The President’s role in the lawmaking process also reflects the Framers’ careful efforts to check whatever propensity a particular Congress might have to enact oppressive, improvident, or ill-considered measures. The President’s veto role in the legislative process was described later during public debate on ratification:

“It establishes a salutary check upon the legislative body, calculated to guard the community against the effects of faction, precipitancy, or of any impulse unfriendly to the public good, which may happen to influence a majority of that body.”
“…The primary inducement to conferring the power in question upon the executive is, to enable him to defend himself; the secondary one is to increase the chances in favor of the community against the passing of bad laws, through haste, inadvertence, or design.” [Quoting Federalist No. 73]…

The Court also has observed that the Presentment Clauses serve the important purpose of assuring that a “national” perspective is grafted on the legislative process:
“The President is a representative of the people just as the members of the Senate and of the House are, and it may be, at some times, on some subjects, that the President elected by all the people is rather more representative of them all than are the members of either body of the Legislature whose constituencies are local and not countrywide…” Myers v United States, [1926] ….

C-Bicameralism

The bicameral requirement of Art I, was of scarcely less concern to the Framers than was the Presidential veto and indeed the two concepts are interdependent. By providing that no law could take effect without the concurrence of the prescribed majority of the Members of both Houses, the Framers reemphasized their belief, already remarked upon in connection with the Presentment Clauses, that legislation should not be enacted unless it has been careful and fully considered by the Nations’ elected officials. In the Constitutional Convention debates on the need for a bicameral legislature, James Wilson, later to become a Justice of this Court, commented:

“Despotism comes on mankind in different shapes. Sometimes in an Executive, sometimes in a military, one. Is there danger of a Legislative despotism? Theory & practice both proclaim it. If the Legislative authority be not restrained, there can be neither liberty nor stability; and it can only be restrained by dividing it within itself, into distinct and independent branches. In a single house there is no check, but the inadequate one, of the virtue & good sense of those who compose it.” …

Hamilton argued that a Congress comprised of a single House was antithetical to the very purpose of the Constitution. Were the Nation to adopt a Constitution providing for only one legislative organ, he warned:

“[W]e shall finally accumulate, in a single body, all the most important prerogatives or sovereignty, and thus entail upon our posterity one of the most execrable forms of government that human infatuation ever contrived. Thus we should create in reality that very tyranny which the adversaries of the new Constitution either are, or affect to be, solicitous to avert.” The Federalist No. 22…

This view was rooted in a general skepticism regarding the fallibility of human nature later commented on by Joseph Story:

“Public bodies, like private persons, are occasionally under the dominion of strong passions and excitements; impatient, irritable, and impetuous… If [a legislature] feels no check but its own will, it rarely has the firmness to insist upon holding a question long enough under its own view, to see and mark it in all its bearings and relations on society.” …

These observations are consistent with what many of the Framers expressed, none more cogently than Madison in pointing up the need to divide and disperse power in order to protect liberty:

“In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.” The Federalist No. 51…

However familiar, it is useful to recall that apart from their fear that special interests could be favored at the expense of public needs, the Framers were also concerned, although not of one mind, over the apprehensions of the smaller states. Those states feared a commonality of interest among the larger states would work to their disadvantage; representatives of the larger states, on the other hand, were skeptical of a legislature that could pass laws favoring a minority of the people… It need hardly be repeated here that the Great compromise, under which one House was viewed as representing the people and the other the states, allayed the fears of both the large and small states.
We see therefore that the Framers were acutely conscious that the bicameral requirement and the Presentment Clauses would serve essential constitutional functions. The President’s participation in the legislative process was to protect the Executive Branch from Congress and to protect the whole people from improvident laws. The division of Congress into two distinctive bodies assures that the legislative power would be exercised only after opportunity for full study and debate in separate settings. The President’s unilateral veto power, in turn, was limited by the power of two-thirds of both Houses of Congress to overrule a veto thereby precluding final arbitrary action of one person… It emerges clearly that the prescription for legislative action in Art I, represents the Framers’ decision that the legislative power of the Feral Government be exercised in accord with a single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered, procedure.

IV

The Constitution sought to divide the delegated powers of the new Federal Government into three defined categories, Legislative, Executive, and Judicial, to assure, as nearly as possible, that each branch of government would confine itself to its assigned responsibility. The hydraulic pressure inherent within each of the separate Branches to exceed the outer limits of it power, even to accomplish desirable objectives, must be resisted.
* * *
Since it is clear that the action by the house under 244(c)(2) was not within any of the express constitutional exceptions authorizing one House to act alone, and equally clear that it was an exercise of legislative power, that action was subject to the standards prescribed in Art I. The bicameral requirement, the Presentment Clauses, the President’s veto, and Congress’ power to override a veto were intended to erect enduring checks on each Branch and to protect the people from the improvident exercise of power by mandating certain prescribed steps. To preserve those checks, and maintain the separation of powers, the carefully defined limits on the power of each Branch must not be eroded. To accomplish what has been attempted by one House of Congress in this case requires action in conformity with the express procedures of the Constitution’s prescription for legislative action: passage by a majority of both houses and presentment to the President.
The veto authorized by 244(c)92) doubtless has been in many respects a convenient shortcut; the “sharing” with the Executive by Congress of its authority over aliens in this manner is, on its face, an appealing compromise. In purely practical terms, it is obviously easier for action to be taken by one House without submission to the President; but it is crystal clear from the records of the Convention, contemporaneous writings and debates, that the Framers ranked other values higher than efficiency. The records of the Convention and debates in the States preceding ratification underscore the common desire to define and limit the exercise of the newly created federal powers affecting the states and the people. There is unmistakable expression of determination that legislation by the national Congress be a step-by-step, deliberate and deliberative process.
The choices we discern as having been made in the Constitutional Convention impose burdens on governmental processes that often seem clumsy, inefficient, even unworkable, but those hard choices were consciously made by men who had lived under a form of government that permitted arbitrary governmental acts to go unchecked. There is no support in the Constitution or decisions of this Court for the proposition that the cumbersomeness and delays often encountered in complying with explicit constitutional standards may be avoided, either by the Congress or by the President… With all the obvious flaws of delay, untidiness, and potential for abuse, we have not yet found a better way to preserve freedom than by making the exercise of power subject to the carefully crafted restraints spelled out in the Constitution.