The National Emergencies Act (NEA) (, codified at –1651) is a United States federal law passed to end all previous national emergencies and to formalize the emergency powers of the President.
The Act empowers the President to activate special powers during a crisis but imposes certain procedural formalities when invoking such powers. The perceived need for the law arose from the scope and number of laws granting special powers to the executive in times of national emergency. Congress can terminate an emergency declaration with a joint resolution enacted into law. Powers available under this Act are limited to the 136 emergency powers Congress has defined by law.
The legislation was signed by President Gerald Ford on September 14, 1976. , 60 national emergencies have been declared, more than 30 of which remain in effect.
Background
The first President to issue an emergency proclamation was Woodrow Wilson, who on February 5, 1917, issued the following:
This proclamation was within the limits of the act that established the United States Shipping Board. The first president to declare a national emergency was President Abraham Lincoln, during the American Civil War. Starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, presidents asserted the power to declare emergencies without limiting their scope or duration, without citing the relevant statutes, and without congressional oversight. The Supreme Court in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer limited what a president could do in such an emergency, but did not limit the emergency declaration power itself. A 1973 Senate investigation found (in Senate Report 93-549) that four declared emergencies remained in effect: the 1933 banking crisis with respect to the hoarding of gold, a 1950 emergency with respect to the Korean War, a 1970 emergency regarding a postal workers strike, and a 1971 emergency in response to inflation. Many provisions of statutory law are contingent on a declaration of national emergency, as many as 500 by one count. It was due in part to concern that a declaration of "emergency" for one purpose should not invoke every possible executive emergency power, that Congress in 1976 passed the National Emergencies Act.
Presidents have continued to use their emergency authority subject to the provisions of the act, with 42 national emergencies declared between 1976 and 2007. Most of these were for the purpose of restricting trade with certain foreign entities under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) (50 U.S.C. 1701–1707).
Provisions
Termination of presidential authority
A prior Senate investigation had found 470 provisions of federal law that a President might invoke via a declaration of emergency. The Act repealed several of these provisions and stated that prior emergency declarations would no longer give force to those provisions that remained. Congress did not attempt to revoke any outstanding emergency declarations per se, as these remained the President's prerogative under Article Two of the United States Constitution.
Procedure for new emergencies and rescinding emergency declarations
The Act authorizes the President to activate emergency provisions of law via an emergency declaration on the condition that the President specifies the provisions so activated and notifies Congress. An activation would expire if the President expressly terminated the emergency, or did not renew the emergency annually, or if each house of Congress passed a resolution terminating the emergency. After presidents objected to this "Congressional termination" provision on separation of powers grounds, and the Supreme Court in INS v. Chadha (1983) held such provisions to be an unconstitutional legislative veto, it was replaced in 1985 with termination by an enacted joint resolution. A joint resolution passed by both chambers requires presidential signature, giving the president veto power over the termination (requiring a two-thirds majority in both houses in the case of a contested termination). The Act also requires the President and executive agencies to maintain records of all orders and regulations that proceed from use of emergency authority, and to regularly report the cost incurred to Congress.