Five-minute digest
A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States
Summary
In June 1933, deep in the Depression, Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act. Its first title authorized the President to approve codes of fair competition for trades and industries, usually drafted by trade associations, and made violation of an approved code a federal misdemeanor. Hundreds of codes followed, fixing wages, hours and trade practices. The Live Poultry Code, approved in April 1934 for the New York metropolitan area, set a minimum wage and a forty-hour week for slaughterhouse workers and banned various trade practices, among them selling chickens other than by straight killing, under which a retail buyer had to take the run of a coop rather than choose particular birds. The Schechter brothers ran two wholesale poultry businesses in Brooklyn. They bought live chickens, mostly shipped from other states, at New York markets and terminals, had them slaughtered by shochtim, the ritual slaughterers in their employ, and sold them to local butchers and retailers. They were convicted on eighteen counts, including violations of the wage and hour rules, letting customers select individual birds, and selling an unfit chicken, which gave the litigation its popular name, the sick chicken case. The Court of Appeals affirmed most counts, and both sides sought review. The government argued that the Depression was a national emergency, that Congress had stated the act's policy and left details to the President as it had in earlier statutes, and that wages, hours and trade practices in the poultry business affected the flow of interstate commerce. The Schechters argued that Congress had handed lawmaking power to the President and private trade groups without any standard, and that their slaughtering and local sales were not interstate commerce at all. On 27 May 1935 the Court unanimously reversed the convictions. Chief Justice Hughes held first that extraordinary conditions do not enlarge constitutional power. He found that the act gave the President virtually unfettered discretion to approve whatever codes he thought would promote recovery, with no standard of fair competition, and that Congress may not abdicate or transfer its essential legislative functions. He held second that the Schechters' business was local: once the poultry reached Brooklyn, the flow of interstate commerce had ceased, and its effects on interstate commerce were only indirect. Without the distinction between direct and indirect effects, he wrote, there would be no limit to federal power. Justice Cardozo, joined by Justice Stone, concurred: delegation to eliminate unfair practices might be valid, but a power to make any rule helpful to an industry was delegation running riot, and activities local in their immediacy do not become national because of distant repercussions. The library text gives both opinions, minus footnotes. Congress let the act lapse. The Court's narrow view of the commerce power was largely abandoned in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel (1937) and Wickard v. Filburn (1942), while Schechter and Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan (1935) remain the only cases in which the Court struck down a statute as an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power.
Top Lessons
Emergencies and constitutional limits
Hughes begins by insisting that a national crisis, however grave, does not expand the government's powers. The Constitution's grants are adequate in war and peace, he writes, but they remain limited. The principle has been invoked in many later emergencies.
Who makes the law?
The Constitution vests legislative power in Congress. Hughes and Cardozo agree that Congress may leave details to others under a standard, but not hand them the whole task of deciding what the law should be. The codes, drafted largely by trade groups and approved by the President, failed that test.
Where commerce stops
The poultry crossed state lines, but Hughes holds that once it reached Brooklyn and was held for local slaughter and sale, the interstate movement had ended. His distinction between direct and indirect effects, and Cardozo's image of tremors spreading from the rim to the center, frame a question the Court would later answer very differently.
A unanimous check on a popular program
The Court decided against the centerpiece of the early New Deal without a single dissent, joined by justices who later supported broad federal power. The case shows that structural limits can unite judges who differ on economic policy.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power.”
“The Congress is not permitted to abdicate or to transfer to others the essential legislative functions with which it is thus vested.”
“So far as the poultry here in question is concerned, the flow in interstate commerce had ceased.”
“Otherwise, as we have said, there would be virtually no limit to the federal power, and for all practical purposes we should have a completely centralized government.”
Frequently cited
“This is delegation running riot.”
“Activities local in their immediacy do not become interstate and national because of distant repercussions.”
Medical Lens
One count involved selling an unfit chicken, but the opinions treat it only as a code violation; the case concerns delegation of legislative power and the commerce power, not health or medicine.