that all legislative power, therein granted, shall be vested in Congress, which Congress shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives; and yet, in another article, it gives to the President a qualified negative over all acts of Congress.  So the Constitution declares that the judicial power shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and such inferior courts as Congress may establish.  It gives, nevertheless, in another provision, judicial power to the Senate; and, in like manner, though it declares that the executive power shall be vested in the President, using, in the immediate context, no words of limitation, yet it elsewhere subjects the treaty-making power, and the appointing power, to the concurrence of the Senate.  The irresistible inference from these considerations is, that the mere nomination of a department, as one of the three great and commonly acknowledged departments of government, does not confer on that department any power at all.  Notwithstanding the departments are called the legislative, the executive, and the judicial, we must yet look into the provisions of the Constitution itself, in order to learn, first, what powers the Constitution regards as legislative, executive, and judicial; and, in the next place, what portions or quantities of these powers are conferred on the respective departments; because no one will contend that all legislative power belongs to Congress, all executive power to the President, or all judicial power to the courts of the United States.

The first three articles of the Constitution, as all know, are taken up in prescribing the organization, and enumerating the powers, of the three departments.  The first article treats of the legislature, and its first section is, “All legislative power, herein granted, shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”  The second article treats of the executive power, and its first section declares that “the executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”  The third article treats of the judicial power, and its first section declares that “the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may, from time to time, ordain and establish.”

It is too plain to be doubted, I think, Sir, that these descriptions of the persons or officers in whom the executive and the judicial powers are to be vested no more define the extent of the grant of those powers, than the words quoted from the first article describe the extent of the legislative grant to Congress.  All these several titles, heads of articles, or introductory clauses, with the general declarations which they contain, serve to designate the departments, and to mark the general distribution of powers; but in all the departments, in the executive and judicial as well as in the legislative, it would be unsafe to contend for any specific power under such clauses.