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Laurence Tribe, The Legislative Veto Decision: A Law by Any Other Name?, 21 Harv. J. on Legis. 1 (1984).


Abstract: In INS v. Chadha, the Supreme Court decided that the one-House legislative veto was unconstitutional. The Court held that the veto under- mined the separation of powers and violated the bicamerality and pres- entment requirements. In this Article, Professor Tribe examines the rea- soning behind the Court's decision and the potential impact of the decision on Congress and the lower courts. Professor Tribe challenges the Court's premise that Congress's veto decision in Chadha was necessarily a legis- lative action and questions the general principle that Congress cannot delegate power to itself. Nevertheless, he argues that the Chadha result may be defensible on narrower bill of attainder or usurpation-of-judicial- futnction grounds. Finally, Professor Tribe agrees with the majority's hold- ing that the legislative veto provision was severable from the rest of the delegation of power. He proposes a test for severability that avoids the traditional focus on hypothetical legislative intent and that itill pernit the survival of most of the existing statutes containing legislative veto provisions.