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BY LISA TREI Television viewers interested in the question of a president's constitutional authority during a time of national crisis should tune in at 10 p.m. Feb. 13 to an hour-long program on KTEH Channel 54 that is co-produced by Stanford. Seizing Power: The Steel Seizure Case Revisited examines the constitutional controversy that surrounded President Harry S. Truman's 1952 decision to seize the nation's steel mills during the Korean War to avoid an impending shutdown caused by a wage dispute. Believing that a strike would impair the production of materiel needed to sustain the war effort, Truman took control of the mills. Truman's action prompted a lawsuit, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, by steel company owners to get their property back. The case quickly landed before the Supreme Court. In a rare ruling in which the high court stood up to a president, the justices decided 6-3 that Truman did not have the authority to seize the mills, despite his claims that the war in Korea demanded he exercise emergency powers. The program includes a four-minute introduction containing historic newsreels that helps set the stage for the case. Executive Producer Randy Bean headed the university's collaboration with KTEH. Stanford Law School reenacted the historic case last October during Reunion Homecoming Weekend to commemorate several important events, Dean Kathleen Sullivan said. It was the 50th anniversary class reunion of both Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. It also was the 50th anniversary of the Kirkwood Moot Court Competition. In August 2001, Sullivan contacted Rehnquist to suggest a reenactment of Marbury v. Madison at the reunion, but he turned it down, telling her, "It's a boring case." Sullivan knew that Rehnquist does not like moot courts, so she expected the conversation to end there. However, Rehnquist then asked her about reenacting Youngstown Sheet &Tube, better known as the steel seizure case. It had been a half-century since Rehnquist had clerked for Robert Jackson, a Supreme Court justice who wrote a concurring opinion on the case that today remains one of the most quoted analyses on the constitutional limits of presidential power. Shortly after Rehnquist and Sullivan's conversation, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, took place and the steel seizure case attracted renewed interest as a public debate emerged over whether President George W. Bush was overstepping the boundaries of his office in waging the new war on terrorism. "In the year between, the issue of presidential power in times of a national emergency came up," Sullivan said. "The object initially was to create a great and beautiful event and then it became relevant." The reenactment on Oct. 19 in Memorial Auditorium attracted an overflow crowd. Rehnquist, O'Connor and President Emeritus Gerhard Casper, a constitutional scholar, presided over the case. Charles Koob, Class of 1969 and chair of litigation at Simpson Thacher and Bartlett in New York, served as counsel for the steel companies. Karen Stevenson, Class of 1998 and an associate with Hennigan Bennett & Dorman in Los Angeles, argued the government's case. The reenactment was staged to mirror the proceedings of an actual hearing before the Supreme Court. "It was amazingly realistic," Sullivan said. The event enabled the audience to understand both the process of arguing a Supreme Court case and the steel seizure case's relevance regarding the issue of presidential power in times of national crisis. KTEH, a public television station, is found on Channel 54,
AT&T Broadband Cable 10 and KCAH 25 in Monterey.
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Kathleen Sullivan
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Stanford Report, February 5, 2003
