al government can exercise no powers except
those specifically enumerated in the Constitution, and such implied
powers as are necessary and proper to carry into effect the enumerated
powers, is categorically true only in respect of our internal affairs.
In that field, the primary purpose of the Constitution was to carve from
the general mass of legislative powers _then possessed by the states_
such portions as it was thought desirable to vest in the federal
government, leaving those not included in the enumeration still in the
states.... That this doctrine applies only to powers which the states
had, is self evident. And since the states severally never possessed
international powers, such powers could not have been carved from the
mass of state powers but obviously were transmitted to the United States
from some other source.... A political society cannot endure without a
supreme will somewhere. Sovereignty is never held in suspense. When,
therefore, the external sovereignty of Great Britain in respect of the
colonies ceased, it immediately passed to the Union.... It results that
the investment of the federal government with the powers of external
sovereignty did not depend upon the affirmative grants of the
Constitution. The powers to declare and wage war, to conclude peace, to
make treaties, to maintain diplomatic relations with other
sovereignties, if they had never been mentioned in the Constitution,
would have vested in the federal government as necessary concomitants of
nationality."[18] Yet for the most part, these holdings do not, as
Justice Sutherland suggests, directly affect "the internal affairs" of
the nation; they touch principally its peripheral relations, as it
were. The most serious inroads on the doctrine of enumerated powers are,
in fact, those which have taken place under cover of the doctrine--the
vast expansion in recent years of national legislative power in the
regulation of commerce among the States and in the expenditure of the
national revenues; and verbally at least Marshall laid the ground for
these developments in some of the phraseology above quoted from his
opinion in McCulloch _v._ Maryland.

Nondelegability of Legislative Power

ORIGIN OF DOCTRINE

At least three distinct ideas have contributed to the development of the
principle that legislative power cannot be delegated. One is the
doctrine of separation of powers: Why go to the trouble of separating
the three powers of govern