ABSTRACT
According to the 18th-century theories in which the Fathers of our Constitution were instructed, the essential expression of sovereignty is law-making. The law-making body is peculiarly, and in the primary sense, the sovereign. Since law-making is the essential expression of sovereignty, Rousseau as well as Locke taught that the law-making power cannot be delegated. Granted these qualifications, it remains true that for nearly a century and a half Congress did keep in its own hands a clearly preponderant and seldom challenged control of the law-making power and process. From 1801 to 1913, as if to insist on another formal symbol that would express Congress' law-making monopoly, the messages were transmitted in writing, not spoken in person by the President. Franklin Roosevelt was threatening to usurp the lawmaking function not merely in substance—as had through subterfuge or oversight or presidential impatience been done before—but in form and official procedure as well: a step far more fatal from a constitutional standpoint.
