Chief Justice Rehnquist on the Steel Seizures Case

Chief Justice William Rehnquist talked about the 1952 U.S. Supreme Court case Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer, in which the court limited the power of the president to seize property when it ruled 6-3 that President Truman lacked the authority to seize steel plants in order to avert a labor strike in the midst of the Korean War. Chief Justice Rehnquist clerked for Associate Justice Robert Jackson when the latter wrote an opinion on the case.

Chief Justice Rehnquist was interviewed in Washington, D.C., for a video presented at the conference “President Truman and the Steel Seizure Case: A 50-Year Retrospective” held by Duquesne University School of Law and the Truman Presidential Museum and Library, co-sponsored by the Duquesne Law Review. It was presented November 22, 2002, in the university’s Duquesne Union Ballroom in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. close