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For this reason, courts of justice have annulled, as constituting undue delegation of legislative powers,
state laws granting the judicial department, the power to determine whether certain territories should be
annexed to a particular municipality or vesting in a Commission the right to determine the plan and frame
of government of proposed villages and what functions shall be exercised by the same, although the
powers and functions of the village are specifically limited by statute or conferring upon courts the
authority to declare a given town or village incorporated, and designate its metes and bounds, upon
petition of a majority of the taxable inhabitants thereof, setting forth the area desired to be included in
such village or authorizing the territory of a town, containing a given area and population, to be
incorporated as a town, on certain steps being taken by the inhabitants thereof and on certain
determination by a court and subsequent vote of the inhabitants in favor thereof, insofar as the court is
allowed to determine whether the lands embraced in the petition "ought justly" to be included in the
village, and whether the interest of the inhabitants will be promoted by such incorporation, and to enlarge
and diminish the boundaries of the proposed village "as justice may require" or creating a Municipal Board
of Control which shall determine whether or not the laying out, construction or operation of a toll road is in
the "public interest" and whether the requirements of the law had been complied with, in which case the
board shall enter an order creating a municipal corporation and fixing the name of the same.
To summarize and conclude upon this point: Sec. 3 of the Recovery Act is without precedent. It supplies no
standards for any trade, industry or activity. It does not undertake to prescribe rules of conduct to be
applied to particular states of fact determined by appropriate administrative procedure. Instead of
prescribing rules of conduct, it authorizes the making of codes to prescribe them. For that legislative
undertaking, Sec. 3 sets up no standards, aside from the statement of the general aims of rehabilitation,
correction and expansion described in Sec. 1. In view of the scope of that broad declaration, and of the
nature of the few restrictions that are imposed, the discretion of the President in approving or prescribing
codes, and thus enacting laws for the government of trade and industry throughout the country, is virtually
unfettered. We think that the code making authority thus conferred is an unconstitutional delegation of
legislative power.
If the term "unfair competition" is so broad as to vest in the President a discretion that is "virtually
unfettered." and, consequently, tantamount to a delegation of legislative power, it is obvious that "public
welfare," which has even a broader connotation, leads to the same result. In fact, if the validity of the
delegation of powers made in Section 68 were upheld, there would no longer be any legal impediment to a
statutory grant of authority to the President to do anything which, in his opinion, may be required by public
welfare or public interest. Such grant of authority would be a virtual abdication of the powers of Congress
in favor of the Executive, and would bring about a total collapse of the democratic system established by
our Constitution, which it is the special duty and privilege of this Court to uphold.
RATIO: Accordingly, in delegating powers to administrative bodies, the legislature must ordinarily
prescribe a policy, standard, or rule for their guidance and must not vest them with an arbitrary and
uncontrolled discretion with regard thereto, and a statute which is deficient in this respect is invalid.
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