s into the picture of presidential emergency
action in the past and musters impressive evidence to show that it does.
And "plaintiffs admit," he asserts, more questionably, "that the
emergency procedures of Taft-Hartley are not mandatory."[465] He
concludes as follows: "The diversity of views expressed in the six
opinions of the majority, the lack of reference to authoritative
precedent, the repeated reliance upon prior dissenting opinions, the
complete disregard of the uncontroverted facts showing the gravity of
the emergency and the temporary nature of the taking all serve to
demonstrate how far afield one must go to affirm the order of the
District Court. The broad executive power granted by Article II to an
officer on duty 365 days a year cannot, it is said, be invoked to avert
disaster. Instead, the President, must confine himself to sending a
message to Congress recommending action. Under this messenger-boy
concept of the Office, the President cannot even act to preserve
legislative programs from destruction so that Congress will have
something left to act upon. There is no judicial finding that the
executive action was unwarranted because there was in fact no basis for
the President's finding of the existence of an emergency for, under this
view, the gravity of the emergency and the immediacy of the threatened
disaster are considered irrelevant as a matter of law."[466]

Evaluation; Presidential Emergency Power

The doctrine of "the opinion of the Court" is that, if Congress can do
it under, say, the necessary and proper clause, then the President,
lacking authority from Congress, cannot do it on the justification that
an emergency requires it. Although four Justices are recorded as
concurring in the opinion, their accompanying opinions whittle their
concurrence in some instances to the vanishing point. Justice Douglas's
supplementary argument on the basis of Amendment V logically confines
the doctrine of the opinion to executive seizures of property. Justices
Frankfurter and Burton and, less clearly, Justice Jackson insist in
effect that Congress had exercised its power in the premises of the case
in opposition to seizure. Justice Clark, on the basis of Chief Justice
Marshall's opinion in Little _v._ Barreme, holds unambiguously that,
Congress having entered the field, its evident intention to rule out
seizures supplied the law of the case. That the President does possess a
residual of resultant power above,