What Does the Election Mean for High Court?

Oct. 7, 2008 — -- Congress got its back up last week over the prospect of padding the president's already formidable authority with a proposed bailout bill that gave Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson virtually unchecked power to spend $700 billion rescuing the financial sector.

So 451 pages and countless arm-twists later, the House and Senate imposed their will on the bill with oversight committees and other bells and whistles that made the bailout politically -- as well as constitutionally -- palatable.

There was a time, though, when even those safeguards might not have been enough to pass constitutional muster. Until the late 1930s, the Supreme Court usually struck down laws giving the president freedom to do things such as save the economy.

Though the court backed off after the New Deal, some prominent federal judges still yearn for that era. We don't know what they think of the bailout package, but if their views take hold on the high court, you can probably say goodbye to many of the regulations that have made workplaces safer, the environment cleaner and, truth be told, Wall Street more transparent than it would be otherwise.

So on this first week of the Supreme Court's new term, what are the chances that any of these judges will become justices? If Barack Obama wins, forget it. But if John McCain is elected, they could be near the top of his list.

It all comes down to the Sick Chicken Case.

In 1934, a slaughterhouse called the Schechter Poultry Corp. of New York was convicted of selling an "unfit chicken" to a butcher, among other violations of the Live Poultry Code. President Franklin Roosevelt approved the code the year before, one of several that Congress authorized under the National Industrial Recovery Act to get various industries back on track during the depression.

Schechter's appeal of its conviction eventually reached the Supreme Court, where the company argued that the poultry code was unconstitutional because it had been approved by the president rather than Congress, and only Congress had the power to make laws.

The high court agreed with Schechter, overturning his conviction and defining what's now known as the Nondelegation Doctrine: "Congress cannot delegate legislative power to the president to exercise an unfettered discretion to make whatever law he thinks may be needed or advisable for the rehabilitation and expansion of trade or industry."