Article II, Section 2, Clause 1:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

The most important segment of the home front regulated by what were in effect presidential edicts was the field of labor relations. Exactly six months before Pearl Harbor, on June 7, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt, citing his proclamation thirteen days earlier of an unlimited national emergency, issued an Executive Order seizing the North American Aviation Plant at Inglewood, California, where, on account of a strike, production was at a standstill.1 Attorney General Robert Jackson justified the seizure as growing out of the “duty constitutionally and inherently rested upon the President to exert his civil and military as well as his moral authority to keep the defense efforts of the United States a going concern,” as well as “to obtain supplies for which Congress has appropriated the money, and which it has directed the President to obtain.” 2 Other seizures followed, and on January 12, 1942, President Roosevelt, by Executive Order 9017, created the National War Labor Board. The order declared in part, “by reason of the state of war declared to exist by joint resolutions of Congress, . . . the national interest demands that there shall be no interruption of any work which contributes to the effective prosecution of the war; and . . . as a result of a conference of representatives of labor and industry which met at the call of the President on December 17, 1941, it has been agreed that for the duration of the war there shall be no strikes or lockouts, and that all labor disputes shall be settled by peaceful means, and that a National War Labor Board be established for a peaceful adjustment of such disputes.” 3 In this field, too, Congress intervened by means of the War Labor Disputes Act of June 25, 1943,4 which authorized plant seizures in support of war efforts but which, however, still left ample basis for presidential activity of a legislative character.5

Footnotes

1

Exec. Order No. 8773, 6 Fed. Reg. 2777 (1941)

2

Edward Corwin, Total War and the Constitution 47–48 (1946). As Supreme Court Justice, Jackson would later deny that the President as Commander in Chief had authority to seize steel manufacturing plants affected by labor strife. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 646 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring) ( “What the power of command may include I do not try to envision, but I think it is not a military prerogative, without support of law, to seize persons or property because they are important or even essential for the military and naval establishment.” ).

3

7 Fed. Reg. 237 (1942).

4

57 Stat. 163 (1943).

5

See Arthur T. Vanderbilt, War Powers and Their Administration, 1942 Ann. Surv. Am. L. 271–273 (1942) (listing various Executive Orders, proclamations, and orders of the National War Labor Board).