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The Second New Deal and the Problem of Delegation of Legislative Power

The Wagner Act was only one of several legislative initiatives undertaken during the second New Deal that involved the rise of administrative authority and the penetration of federal law into the daily lives of Americans. The Social Security Act, signed by Roosevelt on August 14, 1935, provided old-age assistance through a federal-state pension fund, administered by the Social Security Administration, to which both employers and employees contributed. The act also established a joint federal-state unemployment compensation system, providing further evidence of the growing importance of cooperative federalism. The Fair Labor Standards Act established a minimum wage and entrusted to the Department of Labor the responsibility of overseeing its operation. The Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938, one of the last major pieces of domestic New Deal legislation, significantly strengthened the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, giving new enforcement and investigatory powers to the Food and Drug Administration. Still another statute permitted the secretary of agriculture to set standards of quality and condition for certain agricultural commodities moving in interstate and foreign commerce.

The fulfillment of the administrative and social welfare state during the New Deal raised issues about the scope of administrative authority and the place of the administrative agency within the traditional scheme of separation of powers. While New Deal measures enjoyed great popular support, an increasingly suspicious business community questioned the extent to which Congress could delegate to agencies and bureaus the authority to conduct legislative and judicial-like actions. Congress was surely within its powers to direct agencies to carry out defined tasks, but critics of the New Deal (and of administrative regulation since) have charged that such agencies should not engage in the formation of policy, because that power cannot be delegated by Congress, under the concept of separation of powers, to an agency that is also part

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of the executive branch. The political opposition to the legal experimentation of the New Deal was translated into a string of Supreme Court decisions.

 


Date: 2015-01-29; view: 551


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