legislative veto

 In administrative law, a provision that allows a congressional resolution (passed by a majority of congress, but not signed by the President) to nullify a rulemaking or other action taken by an executive agency.  At one time, legislative veto provisions were relatively common, and went along with many congressional delegations of power to administrative agencies (e.g. congress would give the INS power to regulate immigration, but retain the power to overrule any of their decisions by legislative veto).  The legislative veto was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983).

Since it is clear that the [legislative veto] was not within any of the express constitutional exceptions authorizing one House to act alone, and equally  clear that it was an exercise of legislative power, that action was subject to the standards prescribed in Art. I. The bicameral requirement, the Presentment Clauses, the President's veto, and Congress' power to override a veto were intended to erect enduring checks on each Branch and to protect the people from the improvident exercise of power by mandating certain prescribed steps. To preserve those checks, and maintain the separation of powers, the carefully defined limits on the power of each Branch must not be eroded. To accomplish what has been attempted by one House of Congress in this case requires action in conformity with the express procedures of the Constitution's prescription for legislative action: passage by a majority of both Houses and presentment to the President.

The [legislative veto] doubtless has been in many respects a convenient shortcut; the "sharing" with the Executive by Congress of its authority over aliens in this manner is, on its face, an appealing compromise. In purely practical terms, it is obviously easier for action to be taken by one House without submission to the President; but it is crystal clear from the records of the Convention, contemporaneous writings, and debates that the Framers ranked other values higher than efficiency. The records of the Convention and debates in the states preceding ratification underscore the common desire to define and limit the exercise of the newly created federal powers affecting the states and the people. There is unmistakable expression of a determination that legislation by the national Congress be a step-by-step, deliberate and deliberative process.

The legislative veto describes features of at least two different forms of government, monarchies and those based on the separation of powers, applied to the authority of the monarch in the first and to the authority of the legislature in the second.

In the case of monarchy, legislative veto describes the right of the ruler to nullify the actions of a legislative body, for example, the French monarch's claim to the right to veto actions of the National Assembly at the start of the French Revolution.^[1]

In the case of representative governments that divide their executive and legislative functions, legislative veto refers to the power of a legislature, or one house of a bicameral legislature, to nullify an action of the executive authority. The practice was common for several decades in the United States at the federal level until ruled unconstitutional in 1983.^[2]

In Germany, the term refers to the authority of the Federal Council (Bundesrat), which represents the German states, to nullify certain categories of legislation enacted by the Bundestag, the nation's bicameral legislature.^[3]