Case Study

Whitney Nixon Indian River State College Case Name: Touby v. United States Citation: 500 us 160 (1991) Facts: In 1970, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act that defined five types or “schedules” of the materials aimed to control and to condemn. The Act empowers the Attorney General with the authority to add or remove substances and to move substance among the schedules. Compliance with the Act's procedures resulted in lengthy delays, drug traffickers were able to develop and market "designer drugs" -- which have pharmacological effects similar to, but chemical compositions slightly different from, scheduled substances -- long before the Government was able to schedule them and initiate prosecutions. In order to address this, in 1984, Congress amended the Act to permit the Attorney General to temporarily schedule drugs, which accelerated the enforcement process. Then the official sanctioned the DEA with these scheduling responsibilities, which decided the including of the designer drug “Euphoria” to a Schedule I. Subsequently, the DEA completed a valid search warrant on the home of Daniel and Lyrissa Touby, where they found a fully functioning Euphoria laboratory. The Toubys were accused of illegal production of Euphoria. The defendants argued that the Controlled Substances Act unconstitutionally delegates legislative power to the Attorney General and the Attorney General wrongly delegated authority to the DEA. The district court rejected the claim, and the defendants were convicted. The Court of Appeals confirmed the previous judicial opinion. Issue: Did the Controlled Substances Act unconstitutionally delegate legislative power to the Attorney General? Whether the Acts allows the Attorney General to delegate authority to the DEA? Rule: The Court confirmed that the nondelegation doctrine established the rights for Congress to cooperate with the other units of government non restricting some level of their power. The opinion was held that the law offered enough regulations regarding rights and restrictions imposed to the Attorney General and did not encroach on the Constitution norms by such delegation. Analysis & Conclusion: The court upheld that the Act legally authorized the prosecutor with the ability to assign responsibilities to other government structures like the DEA and the validity of the Controlled Substance Act was proven, therefore the conviction of the previous judgment was confirmed as well.