The most urgent question before the Supreme Court today is the challenge to President Trump’s tariff policies, and the overarching constitutional issue is the limits on executive power. While it is always difficult to predict how the court will decide, one can look back for precedents. One of the most famous, Youngstown Steel v. Sawyer, seems to offer many parallels to the case at hand.

In late 1951, amid the Korean War, President Truman faced an urgent dilemma. Collective bargaining between the nation’s steel companies and their unions had reached a stalemate.

Management was unwilling to meet what they considered unreasonable wage demands, and employees were equally adamant that their demands were warranted. The president was committed to ensuring the war effort had the necessary steel and equally committed to maintaining stable prices. 

The most available potential remedy was for Truman to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act, which would impose a mandatory cooling-off period; however, Truman detested the Republican-sponsored Taft-Hartley Act and elected not to invoke it. After much public posturing on both sides, Truman announced that he was directing Commerce Secretary Charles Sawyer to seize control of the steel mills.

Initially advised that this unprecedented action would probably be ruled unconstitutional, Truman then received unofficial (and inappropriate) assurance from his old friend, Chief Justice Vinson, that such a move, Vinson believed, would be upheld by the Court. The Court was now filled with liberal-leaning judges, who could be expected to be sympathetic to Truman.

The reaction in Congress was immediate. Within days, 14  separate resolutions to impeach Truman were introduced. Lawmakers warned against “a trend toward dictatorship,” and Senator Pat McCarran warned, “We have lost the democracy that we have long loved.” 

Sound familiar?

Meanwhile, the steel industry executives were astounded at the President’s action. Industry spokesman Clarence Randall responded, “I felt physically ill. It seemed to me that all I had learned of government from school days on, all that I had believed in with respect to the balance of powers…. had suddenly been swept away.”

Up to this point, the steel companies had sought separate legal counsel from various sources, but they now consolidated their case and wisely asked John W. Davis, senior partner of Davis, Polk & Wardwell, to make the sole oral argument.

If ever there were the perfect confluence of events and the man, it was this case and Davis. Then in his 79th year, Davis stood at the apex of the legal profession. A former congressman, United States solicitor general, American ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, Democratic nominee for president in 1924, and senior partner of a major Wall Street law firm, Davis had argued 138 cases before the Supreme Court — more than anyone in modern American history.

In addition to being recognized as “the lawyers’ lawyer,” Davis was ideologically a Jeffersonian Democrat, who fervently believed in limited government and  strict constitutionalism. As counsel to United States Steel and special counsel to Republic Steel, Davis had already submitted his private opinion written in the strongest possible terms, “There is not the slightest doubt that the President’s action is without legal warrant — constitutional or statutory. It is an act of pure usurpation.”

On May 12, 1952, Davis delivered an 87-minute argument before a packed court chamber. He declared Truman’s action not only “a usurpation of power without parallel in American history,” but “a reassertion of the kingly prerogative, the struggle which illumines all the pages of Anglo-Saxon history.”  As one news reporter wrote, Davis “seemed to personify the spirit of constitutionalism, his voice that of history itself.”

Davis proceeded to demand “is it not an immutable principle that our Government is one of limited powers? Is it or is it not an immutable principle that we have a tripartite system of legislation, execution, and judgment? Is it not an immutable principle that the powers of a government are based on a government of laws — not of men?” 

In  conclusion, Davis paused for effect and quietly quoted Jefferson, “In questions of power, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” The Washington Post reported at the conclusion of Davis’s argument, “seldom has a courtroom sat in such silent admiration.”

Because of the urgency of the case, the high court rendered its ruling in less than 30 days. Chief Justice Vinson’s advice to Truman proved to be ill founded. The court ruled six to three against Truman and in support of limited powers and constitutional restraint.

As the Court now considers Learning Resources v. Trump and once again the question of presidential power, Youngstown Steel will undoubtedly loom large. Jefferson’s words may well again carry the day.