Amalgamated Meat Cutters The Amalgamated Meat Cutters (AMC), officially the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, 1897–1979, was a labor union that represented retail and packinghouse workers. In 1979, the AMCBW merged with the Retail Clerks I ...

v. Connally'', 337 F. Supp. 737 (D.D.C. 1971), is a court case decided by the

United States District Court for the District of Columbia The United States District Court for the District of Columbia (in case citations, D.D.C.) is a federal district court in the District of Columbia. It also occasionally handles (jointly with the United States District Court for the District of ...

relating to the limits of the

nondelegation doctrine The doctrine of nondelegation (or non-delegation principle) is the theory that one branch of government must not authorize another entity to exercise the power or function which it is constitutionally authorized to exercise itself. It is explicit ...

. The district court upheld the delegation of

legislative power A legislature is an assembly with the authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country or city. They are often contrasted with the executive and judicial powers of government. Laws enacted by legislatures are usually known as p ...

to the

executive branch The Executive, also referred as the Executive branch or Executive power, is the term commonly used to describe that part of government which enforces the law, and has overall responsibility for the governance of a State (polity), state. In poli ...

that was contained in the Economic Stabilization Act. Even though the Act gave a broad grant of legislative power (what opponents called a "blank check"), the court reasoned that discretion of the executive branch would be limited by: # The "broad equity standard inherent in a stabilization program" (i.e. the norms of rule of law and the history and tradition of executive regulation of the economy) # The practice of "self-narrowing." Specifically, the court believed that once the executive branch developed standards for exercising its discretion, it would be bound by those standards it had previously set. Federal Courts accepted the principle of self-narrowing for about thirty years. In ''

Whitman v. American Trucking Associations, Inc. ''Whitman v. American Trucking Associations, Inc.'', 531 U.S. 457 (2001), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court in which the Environmental Protection Agency's National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for regulating ozone and ...

'' (2001), however, the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

, in a decision written by

Justice Scalia Antonin Gregory Scalia (; March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectua ...

, specifically overturned the principle of self-narrowing, arguing that " e very choice of which portion of power to exercise ... would ''itself'' be an exercise of the forbidden legislative authority." mphasis original In both decisions, however, the courts ultimately upheld the grant of discretionary power, thus indicating the continued weakness of the nondelegation doctrine.

External links

* 1971 in United States case law United States administrative case law United States statutory interpretation case law United States District Court for the District of Columbia cases United Food and Commercial Workers {{US-case-law-stub