Origin Traces to John Locke's 1690 formulation that the legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands; the modern US intelligible-principle standard dates to J.W. Hampton, Jr. and Co. v. United States (1928).
The nondelegation doctrine is the constitutional principle that a legislature may not delegate its own legislative powers to another branch of government, an administrative agency, or a private entity. In United States constitutional law it derives from Article One, Section One, which vests all legislative powers in Congress; the Supreme Court has nonetheless allowed broad delegations to executive agencies so long as Congress lays down an intelligible principle to guide and constrain the delegated authority, a standard from J.W. Hampton, Jr. and Co. v. United States (1928) that has led the Court to strike down a federal statute on nondelegation grounds only twice, both in 1935.
Facts
Origin PeriodTraces to John Locke's 1690 formulation that the legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands; the modern US intelligible-principle standard dates to J.W. Hampton, Jr. and Co. v. United States (1928). 1 Core PrincipleCongress must lay down by legislative act an intelligible principle to which the agency exercising delegated authority is directed to conform, so the agency's discretion is genuinely bounded by a legislative standard rather than open-ended. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
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