votal proposition of the opinion is, in brief, that inasmuch as
Congress could have ordered the seizure of the steel mills, the
President had no power to do so without prior congressional
authorization. To support this position no proof is offered in the way
of past opinion, and the following extract from Justice Clark's opinion
presents a formidable challenge to it: "One of this Court's first
pronouncements upon the powers of the President under the Constitution
was made by Mr. Chief Justice John Marshall some one hundred and fifty
years ago. In Little _v._ Barreme,[425] he used this characteristically
clear language in discussing the power of the President to instruct the
seizure of the _Flying Fish_, a vessel bound from a French port: 'It is
by no means clear that the president of the United States whose high
duty it is to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," and who
is commander in chief of the armies and navies of the United States,
might not, without any special authority for that purpose, in the then
existing state of things, have empowered the officers commanding the
armed vessels of the United States, to seize and send into port for
adjudication, American vessels which were forfeited by being engaged in
this illicit commerce. But when it is observed that [an act of Congress]
gives a special authority to seize on the high seas, and limits that
authority to the seizure of vessels bound or sailing to a French port,
the legislature seems to have prescribed that the manner in which this
law shall be carried into execution, was to exclude a seizure of any
vessel not bound to a French port.' Accordingly, a unanimous Court held
that the President's instructions had been issued without authority and
that they could not 'legalize an act which without those instructions
would have been a plain trespass.' I know of no subsequent holding of
this Court to the contrary."[426]

Another field which the President and Congress have each occupied at
different times is extradition. In 1799 President Adams, in order to
execute the extradition provisions of the Jay Treaty, issued a warrant
for the arrest of one Jonathan Robbins. As Chief Justice Vinson recites
in his opinion: "This action was challenged in Congress on the ground
that no specific statute prescribed the method to be used in executing
the treaty. John Marshall, then a member of the House of
Representatives, in the course of his successful defense of the
Pre