deal with other matters of even greater delicacy and nearer consequence
if you do not grant it to me in ungrudging measure."[353] The fact is,
of course, that Congress has enormous powers the support of which is
indispensable to any foreign policy. In the long run Congress is the
body that lays and collects taxes for the common defense, that creates
armies and maintains navies, although it does not direct them, that
pledges the public credit, that declares war, that defines offenses
against the law of nations, that regulates foreign commerce; and it has
the further power "to make all laws which shall be necessary and
proper"--that is, which _it_ deems to be such--for carrying into
execution not only its own powers but all the powers "of the government
of the United States and of any department or officer thereof."
Moreover, its laws made "in pursuance" of these powers are "supreme law
of the land" and the President is bound constitutionally to "take care
that" they "be faithfully executed." In point of fact, Congressional
legislation has operated to augment Presidential powers in the foreign
field much more frequently than it has to curtail them. The Lend-Lease
Act of March 11, 1941[354] is the classic example, although it only
brought to culmination a whole series of enactments with which Congress
had aided and abetted the administration's foreign policy in the years
between 1934 and 1941.[355]

THE DOCTRINE OF POLITICAL QUESTIONS

It is not within the province of the courts to inquire into the policy
underlying action taken by the "political departments"--Congress and the
President--in the exercise of their conceded powers. This commonplace
maxim is, however, sometimes given an enlarged application so as to
embrace questions as to the existence of facts and even questions of law
which the Court would normally regard as falling within its
jurisdiction. Such questions are termed "political questions," and are
especially common in the field of foreign relations. The leading case is
Foster _v._ Neilson,[356] where the matter in dispute was the validity
of a grant made by the Spanish Government in 1804 of land lying to the
east of the Mississippi River, involved with which question was the
further one whether the region between the Perdido and Mississippi
Rivers belonged in 1804 to Spain or the United States. Chief Justice
Marshall held that the Court was bound by the action of the political
departments, the President