Youngstown Sheet and Tube

To make sense of this ambiguity, we have to look at how courts evaluate the balance of power.

And the brief brings up arguably the most important concept in separation of powers law, Justice Robert Jackson's framework from a nineteen fifty-two case called Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company versus Sawyer.

I love the Youngstown case.

Uh, for the listener, let's paint the picture of why this case exists.

And this has been happening over the last, you know, couple of decades, but Youngstown has been kind of in trouble since 1977.

That's the, when Youngstown Sheet and Tube announced it would close its Campbell Works mill, and thousands of jobs vanished overnight.

And all of these closures followed.

Tens of thousands of manu-jack- ma-manufacturing jobs, which were good pay and steady work, were just gone for the region.

I would say as I've gotten older, that is one of my greatest appreciations is where we grew up.

I'm reminded how similar our journeys are, given that my grandfather was a steel worker, Youngstown Sheet and Tube.

My family is from, you know, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Northern Canada, but none of my grandparents were born in the United States.

And I also I have fond memories of going for pierogies, and I've got to ask you, was it the potato, the cheese, or the sauerkraut ones that you liked the best?

National security requires capability, but it also requires optionality, redundancy, vendor diversity, interoperability, and the freedom to say no. no contract, no renewal, no unsafe deployment, no export, no continued dependence if law or national security requires otherwise.

And here, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company versus Sawyer supplies an important constitutional boundary.

President Truman confronted a genuine national security emergency during the Korean War.

Yet, the Supreme Court held that the presidential seizure of the still mills lacked constitutional or congressional authorization.

Today, a fallen steel giant is redefining itself.

Over there, a Hilton took over the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company's office.

Here, a U-Haul storage facility has occupied the milk-bottle-shaped architecture of the former Isolays Dairy.

In Bruce Springsteen's crooning imagination, Youngstown had smokestacks reaching like the arms of God into a beautiful sky of soot and clay.

But its booming steel mills are a thing of the past.

In 1977, on what's known as Black Monday, the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company's Campbell Works closed, resulting in 5,000 lost jobs.

Over the next five years, 50,000 lost their livelihoods, beginning a decline from 140,000 residents to under 60,000 today.

The city accumulated a history of crime, violence, and poverty, as well as an abundance of abandoned buildings, often landing in bleakest cities in the world roundups.

Now, when we shift our focus from Congress to the president, you also cannot just assume some general emergency power exists.

Instead, you have to systematically apply Justice Jackson's legendary three-part framework from the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. case.

First step, is the president acting with express or implied congressional authorization? If the answer is yes, executive power is at its absolute maximum because it's supported by both Article one and Article two.

Step two, is the president acting in the face of congressional silence? This puts us in what Jackson famously called the zone of twilight.