e constitutionality of
this delegation of authority has never been seriously questioned."[1538]

PAYMENT OF CLAIMS

No officer of the Federal Government is authorized to pay a debt due
from the United States, whether reduced to judgment or not, without an
appropriation for that purpose.[1539] After the Civil War, a number of
controversies arose out of attempts by Congress to restrict the payment
of the claims of persons who had aided the Rebellion, but had thereafter
received a pardon from the President. The Supreme Court held that
Congress could not prescribe the evidentiary effect of a pardon in a
proceeding in the Court of Claims for property confiscated during the
Civil War,[1540] but that where the confiscated property had been sold
and the proceeds paid into the Treasury, a pardon did not of its own
force authorize the restoration of such proceeds.[1541] It was within
the competence of Congress to declare that the amounts due to persons
thus pardoned should not be paid out of the Treasury and that no general
appropriation should extend to their claims.[1542]

Clause 8. No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States:
And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall,
without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument,
Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or
foreign State.

In 1871 the Attorney General of the United States ruled that: "A
minister of the United States abroad is not prohibited by the
Constitution from rendering a friendly service to a foreign power, even
that of negotiating a treaty for it, provided he does not become an
officer of that power, but the acceptance of a formal commission, as
minister plenipotentiary, creates an official relation between the
individual thus commissioned and the government which in this way
accredits him as its representative, which is prohibited by this clause
of the Constitution."[1543]

Section 10. No State Shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or
Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit
Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in
Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law
impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

Powers Denied to the States

TREATIES, ALLIANCES OR CONFEDERATIONS

At the time of the Civil War this clause was one of the provisions upon
which the