Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. V. Sawyer - Prior History

Prior History

The steel companies reacted immediately, sending attorneys to the home of United States District Judge Walter Bastian within a half hour of the end of the President's speech to ask for issuance of a temporary restraining order. Judge Bastian scheduled a hearing for 11:30 the next day to hear arguments on the motion.

Because hearings on emergency motions came before a randomly chosen judge, the hearing the next day was before Judge Alexander Holtzoff, a Truman appointee. Judge Holtzoff denied the motion on the ground that the balance of equities favored the government.

The case was then assigned to Judge David Andrew Pine, who heard the steel companies' motions for a preliminary injunction. From a tactical perspective, both sides focused on the wrong issues: the government stressed the ultimate constitutional issue of whether the President had the power to seize the mills in its papers, while the steel companies appeared to be shying away from that issue by focusing on the equities and asking the Court merely to enjoin the federal government from entering into a collective bargaining agreement with the Steelworkers.

Judge Pine indicated, however, that he was interested in the fundamental issue of Presidential power; even so, the steel companies' attorneys continued to steer the discussion back to the equities and the President's statutory power under the Taft-Hartley Act. After the attorney for one of the smaller producers, Armco Steel Corporation, finally challenged the government's right to seize its property without Congressional authorization, Judge Pine then asked the attorney for the government to respond.

The assistant Attorney General may have done more harm to the government's case than the steel companies had. Asked by Judge Pine for the source of the President's authority, he offered "Sections 1, 2 and 3 of Article II of the Constitution and whatever inherent, implied or residual powers may flow therefrom". When the Court asked if the government took the position that "when the sovereign people adopted the Constitution, . . . it limited the powers of the Congress and limited the powers of the judiciary, but it did not limit the powers of the Executive", he assured Judge Pine that this was the case. He was, however, unable to name any cases that had held that the President had this power.

His presentation committed the Truman administration to an absolutist version of Presidential power that went beyond the administration's own position. Truman's supporters in Congress first distanced themselves from the argument, then spread the message that Truman disavowed it as well. Finally, Truman issued a statement responding to a constituent's letter in which he acknowledged in very general terms the limitations that the Constitution imposed on his power to respond in a national emergency.

Two days later, Judge Pine issued an injunction barring the government from continuing to hold the steel plants it had seized. The Steelworkers began their strike within minutes of the announcement of the injunction. The government promptly appealed.

It first, however, formally requested that Judge Pine stay his order, and permit the government to resume control of the plants, ending the strike by the Steelworkers. He declined to do so. The government then applied for a stay in the D.C. Circuit. The Court, sitting en banc, granted the government's request for a stay by a five to four vote on April 30, then denied a motion for reconsideration by the steel companies that sought to amend the stay order to bar the government from increasing wages by the same margin the following day. The stay granted by the Court of Appeals was conditioned, however, on the government's filing of a petition for certiorari by May 2, 1952 and only lasted until the Supreme Court acted on that petition.

The government filed its petition for certiorari on May 2, only to discover that the steel companies had already filed one of their own. The government renewed its request for a stay.

In the meantime, the White House convened a meeting between the Steelworkers and the major steel companies on May 3. Those talks made rapid progress and might have produced an agreement, if the announcement that the Supreme Court had granted certiorari and issued a stay allowing the government to maintain possession of the steel mills—but coupled with an order barring any increase in wages during the pendency of the appeal—had not removed any incentive the steel companies had to reach agreement on a new contract with the union.