Almighty President

To Franklin Roosevelt last week came a rare pleasure. The Supreme Court has long seemed bent on limiting his authority, denying him powers which Congress was glad to yield. NRA and the Oil Code were both adjudged unconstitutional delegations of legislative power to the Executive. Last week the Court, sounding not unlike a Psalmist lauding the Almighty, proclaimed the President's supreme might & majesty in a "vast external realm."

In May 1934, Congress, to help stop bloody war in the Chaco jungles, authorized the President to forbid shipment of U. S. arms and munitions to Bolivia and Paraguay. President Roosevelt promptly proclaimed such an embargo, kept it in force until November 1935. Last January Curtiss-Wright Export Corp. and others were indicted for selling 15 machine guns to Bolivia during the embargo. In defense they argued that Congress had improperly delegated its power to the President. A Federal District judge in Brooklyn agreed with them, dismissed the indictment. The Government appealed to the Supreme Court.

In his majority opinion reversing the lower court's decision last week, Mr. Justice Sutherland sharply distinguished between the President's foreign and domestic powers. The Federal Government's foreign powers, said he, were not derived from the States, but inherited from the British Crown as "necessary concomitants of nationality."

"In this vast external realm," observed the bearded, British-born old Associate Justice, "with important, complicated, delicate and manifold problems, the President alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation. He makes treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he alone negotiates. . . .

''It is quite apparent that if, in the maintenance of our international relations, embarrassment--perhaps serious embarrassment--is to be avoided and success for our aims achieved, Congressional legislation . . . must often accord to the President a degree of discretion and freedom from statutory restriction which would not be admissible were domestic affairs alone involved.

"Moreover, he, not Congress, has the better opportunity of knowing the conditions which prevail in foreign countries, and especially is this true in time of war."

From this broad affirmation, crusty Mr. Justice McReynolds alone dissented, without explanation. New Dealers exulted that the decision guaranteed Supreme Court approval of the current Neutrality Act, might also extend to the Reciprocal Trade Treaty Act.

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