Which provision of the law allows the President to discharge student debt? President Biden recently announced that student debt will be forgiven for some groups of Americans but I couldn't figure out which provision of the law allows Biden to do this without a bill passed by Congress?
The most prominent argument that has been advanced surrounding this proposed action can be summarized as follows: There was a bill passed by Congress, in 1965, that authorizes the Secretary of Education to take this action. This theory holds that the executive branch was granted the authority to cancel federal student loan debt as part of the Higher Education Act, duly passed by Congress in 1965 (and encoded as USC 20 §1001 et seq.) Specifically, §1087hh states that: In carrying out the provisions of this part, the Secretary is authorized— to consent to modification, with respect to rate of interest, time of payment of any installment of principal and interest or any portion thereof, or any other provision of any note evidencing a loan which has been made under this part; to enforce, pay, compromise, waive, or release any right, title, claim, lien, or demand, however acquired, including any equity or any right of redemption; ... Further background on the legal theory under which this authorizes debt cancellation can be found in this memo from the Project on Predatory Student Lending, sent to Sen. Elizabeth Warren during her 2020 presidential campaign. They concluded that via this language, Congress has granted the Secretary [of Education] a more specific and unrestricted authority to create and to cancel or modify debt owed under federal student loan programs in the Higher Education Act (HEA) itself. That provision empowers the Secretary to execute the broad debt cancellation plan you have proposed. It should be noted that this argument is not universally accepted. It should also be noted that it is questionable whether anyone could have standing to challenge this action, so whether or not it is allowable may not be testable in court. And finally, it is not yet clear (at least not to me) what the details of this particular executive action are; I'm not even sure they have been released. It could be that they're based on an entirely different legal theory.
Overview An executive order cannot make new law. However, most executive orders are based on powers granted by law to the President, or to some executive agency or department. Others are based on laws that come under the general power and duty of the President to &quot;take care that the laws are executed&quot; and announce some policy for how laws will be interpreted and enforced. Announced mandates In the case of the mask and vaccine mandates announced but not yet issued by the Biden administration, they apparently claim to exercise powers granted under various laws, particularly the Occupational Health and Safety Act. It is likely that once such regulations are formally issued they will be challenged by those opposed to such mandates. If they are upheld, (or are somehow not challenged and thus assumed to be valid) they will carry the force of the laws under which they are issued, and thus the Supremacy Clause will apply to those laws, and to the orders as ways to enforce those laws. Other Precedents The question says: Currently, the only precedent to enforce fines and vaccine mandates (at a state level) that I am aware of is a 1905 decision by the Supreme Court, Jacobson v. Massachusetts (197 US 11 (1905)), where it allowed Massachusetts to fine an individual for refusing to comply with vaccine mandates set by the state. This is not quite correct. Jacobson is the leading case on this issue, but there have been some others. In Zucht v. King, 260 U.S. 174 (1922) the US Supreme Court held that a local ordinance mandating vaccinations for school attendance did not violate federal constitutional rights, citing Jacobson and calling the matter settled law. Note that the ordinance in Zucht applied to both public and private schools without exception. In Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944) the Supreme Court opinion included (at 166) the statement that: Acting to guard the general interest in youth's well being, the state, as parens patriae, may restrict the parent's control by requiring school attendance, regulating or prohibiting the child's labor and in many other ways. Its authority is not nullified merely because the parent grounds his claim to control the child's course of conduct on religion or conscience. Thus, he cannot claim freedom from compulsory vaccination for the child more than for himself on religious grounds. The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death. People v. Pierson, 176 N.Y. 201, 68 N.E. 243. The catalogue need not be lengthened. It is sufficient to show what indeed appellant hardly disputes, that the state has a wide range of power for limiting parental freedom and authority in things affecting the child's welfare, and that this includes, to some extent, matters of conscience and religious conviction. (Emphasis added, footnotes omitted) Prince v. Massachusetts was a child labor case, not a vaccination case, and the above comment was technically obiter dictum (not binding precedent). But because of it Prince has several times been cited in later vaccination cases alongside Jacobson and to show that Jacobson is still good law. Note that Prince, like Jacobson and Zucht, was a case supporting state law against a 14th amendment challenge. Supremacy Clause An Executive Order that is not backed by any valid law would not be the &quot;Supreme law of the land&quot; under the supremacy clause, and might well be simply held invalid for lack of Presidential authority to issue it, depending on the subject of the order. But orders claiming to make law on the President's own authority are quite rare. Youngstown Sheet &amp; Tube Co. v. Sawyer Youngstown Sheet &amp; Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) (the steel seizure case) invalidated such an order. In that case the President not only did not have the backing of a specific law, but failed to follow the procedures set out in a relevant law. In Youngstown Sheet &amp; Tube Co. v. Sawyer the concurring opinion by Justice Jackson has proved influential in later cases and in later congressional drafting of laws. The key passage of that opinion starting at 343 U. S. 635 reads: Presidential powers are not fixed but fluctuate depending upon their disjunction or conjunction with those of Congress. We may well begin by a somewhat over-simplified grouping of practical situations in which a President may doubt, or others may challenge, his powers, and by distinguishing roughly the legal consequences of this factor of relativity. When the President acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate. In these circumstances, and in these only, may he be said (for what it may be worth) to personify the federal sovereignty. If his act is held unconstitutional under these circumstances, it usually means that the Federal Government, as an undivided whole, lacks power. A seizure executed by the President pursuant to an Act of Congress would be supported by the strongest of presumptions and the widest latitude of judicial interpretation, and the burden of persuasion would rest heavily upon any who might attack it. When the President acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain. Therefore, congressional inertia, indifference or quiescence may sometimes, at least, as a practical matter, enable, if not invite, measures on independent presidential responsibility. In this area, any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables, rather than on abstract theories of law. When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter. Courts can sustain exclusive presidential control in such a case only by disabling the Congress from acting upon the subject. Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system. Into which of these classifications does this executive seizure of the steel industry fit? It is eliminated from the first by admission, for it is conceded that no congressional authorization exists for this seizure. That takes away also the support of the many precedents and declarations which were made in relation, and must be confined, to this category. Can it then be defended under flexible tests available to the second category? It seems clearly eliminated from that class, because Congress has not left seizure of private property an open field, but has covered it by three statutory policies inconsistent with this seizure ... Would a vaccine mandate or mask mandate that goes beyond any law passed by Congress fall into Jackson's &quot;zone of twilight&quot;? In the absence of a court ruling, no one can say.
As a private university, they have much broader discretion to require things of you. Questions of 4th amendment rights are beside the point, what would matter is whether it is already covered by some part of your contract with the university. As a starting point, they have the property right to control access to their property, and they grant you the right to use their property in certain ways, in exchange for things that you have to do. The contract does not have to say &quot;We can require you to get covid tests&quot;. It is extremely unlikely that any clause says &quot;You can do anything you want except for the following actions&quot;. Typically, your contract includes a generic agreement to &quot;follow the rules&quot;. There are safety-related standards somewhere in the code of conduct. The requirement to be tested, or to not spread bubonic plague etc. will be subsumed under one of these rules. I understand that you don't want to name the institution.
There is no general legal obligations be truthful Such an obligation only arises where specifically called out by law or where there is a relationship of trust between the parties, e.g. they are negotiating a contract, they have a doctor-patient relationship etc. In any event, the President has legal immunity for actions performed as President. Presidents answer for their misdeeds at the ballot box, not the courthouse.
I will assume for this question you are referring to a US Department of Education backed loan. In that case, according to the US DoE website: If you, the borrower, die, then your federal student loans will be discharged. If you are a parent PLUS loan borrower, then the loan may be discharged if you die, or if the student on whose behalf you obtained the loan dies. The loan will be discharged if a family member or other representative provides a certified copy of the death certificate to the school (for a Federal Perkins Loan) or to the loan servicer (for a Direct Loan or FFEL Program loan). For more information, contact your loan servicer. If, however, it is a private student loan, it will have to be paid by the estate.
Both Congress and the state legislatures are expressly forbidden by the Constitution from passing bills of attainder. That means neither can ever pass a law that names an individual and says "they are suspended." It is so important that it's one of the very few restrictions on government that the original Constitution (before any amendments) prohibited in bot state and federal governments. (Also, a "bill" is not a law. It's what a legislature is considering making a law.)
The constitutional provision quoted in the question has been interpreted to require that a jury trial be available to a person accused of crime by the US Federal Government. Then accused is free to waive this right, and be tried by a judge only if s/he so chooses. The accuse is also free to waive the right to a trial altogether, and plead guilty (or &quot;no contest&quot; which waives a trail without an admission of guilt). The provision could reasonably be interpreted to require that if there is a trial, it be by jury. But I don't see how it could reasonably be read to require trials in all cases, and forbid guilty pleas.
Article II of the Constitution does say that "The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors". So it is true that a president or a federal judge could be impeached and removed from office, and it has happened to some extent 19 times – in 8 cases it went all the way to removal (as opposed to acquittal or resignation). However, this would not be a very effective way to avert a "crisis". Any judicial ruling is subject to appeal by a higher court, until you get to the Supreme Court. Moreover, impeaching a lower judge does not erase his or her rulings. So ultimately, a matter will be decided by SCOTUS. In anticipation of such a ruling, Congress might decide to get rid of some Supreme Court justice who they think might stand in the way. That was attempted with Samuel Chase, who was acquitted. Such a decision is not subject to judicial review (Nixon v. United States 506 U.S. 224). However, SCOTUS can also overturn that decision though that would be very unusual. It would also be very unusual for Congress to impeach a Supreme Court justice for having a position that they disagree with. At any rate, there is no such thing as a "deadlock" between branches of government. When the court rules, that is the end of the matter from a legal perspective. It is, in fact, entirely possible that a general will rule that the court or the president (or both) are wrong and will declare what the law now is, but that takes us out of the realm of legal discussions.