Dames & Moore v. Regan
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| Dames & Moore v. Regan | ||||||||||
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| Argued June 24, 1981 Decided July 2, 1981 |
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| Holding | ||||||||||
| Executive orders dissolving judgments and suspending pending civil claims against Iranian government were constitutional. | ||||||||||
| Court membership | ||||||||||
| Chief Justice: Warren E. Burger Associate Justices: William J. Brennan, Jr., Potter Stewart, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens |
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| Case opinions | ||||||||||
| Majority by: Rehnquist Concurrence by: Stevens, in part Concurrence/dissent by: Powell |
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| Laws applied | ||||||||||
| IEEPA (50 U.S.C. §1702) | ||||||||||
Dames & Moore v. Regan, was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with President Jimmy Carter's Executive Order 12170, which froze Iranian assets in the United States in response to the Iran hostage crisis.
This decision upheld certain actions taken by President Jimmy Carter in January 1981 to settle the controversy resulting from the seizure of American personnel as hostages at the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran, in 1979. To secure the hostages' release, the United States agreed with Iran to terminate legal proceedings in U.S. courts involving claims by U.S. nationals against Iran, to nullify attachments against Iranian property entered by U.S. courts to secure any judgments against Iran, and to transfer such claims from U.S. courts to a newly created arbitration tribunal. These agreements were implemented by executive orders.
The Court upheld these presidential actions against challenges that they were unauthorized by law. The Court concluded that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) authorized the president to nullify the attachments and to transfer Iranian assets. It also approved the suspension of claims filed in U.S. courts even though no specific statutory provision authorized that step. In so doing the Court relied on inferences drawn from related legislation, a history of congressional acquiescence in executive claims settlement practices, and past decisions recognizing broad executive authority.
This decision has been criticized for applying a too‐undemanding standard to the question of presidential power, in particular by relying on inferences from statutes that do not directly deal with certain subjects at hand and, especially, on legislative acquiescence in executive activity. On any view, this decision is an important recognition of broad presidential power in foreign relations.
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This article related to the Supreme Court of the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.See The Legacy of Dames & Moore v. Regan: The Twilight Zone of Concurrent Authority Between the Executive and Congress, 79 Notre Dame L Rev 291 (2003).
