Section 4 confirmed the legitimacy of all U.S. public debt appropriated by the Congress. It also confirmed that neither the United States nor any state would pay for the loss of slaves or debts that had been incurred by the Confederacy. For example, during the Civil War several British and French banks had lent large sums of money to the Confederacy to support its war against the Union.[152] In Perry v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court ruled that under Section 4 voiding a United States bond went beyond the congressional power.[153] The debt-ceiling crisis in 2011 raised the question of what powers Section 4 gives to the President, an issue that remains unsettled.[154] Some, such as legal scholar Garrett Epps, fiscal expert Bruce Bartlett and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, have argued that a debt ceiling may be unconstitutional and therefore void as long as it interferes with the duty of the government to pay interest on outstanding bonds and to make payments owed to pensioners (that is, Social Security recipients).[155][156] Legal analyst Jeffrey Rosen has argued that Section 4 gives the President unilateral authority to raise or ignore the national debt ceiling, and that if challenged the Supreme Court would likely rule in favor of expanded executive power or dismiss the case altogether for lack of standing.[157] Erwin Chemerinsky, professor and dean at University of California, Irvine School of Law, has argued that not even in a dire financial emergency could the President raise the debt ceiling as there is no reasonable way to interpret the Constitution that [allows him to do so].[158]
Posted on: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 21:59:41 +0000
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