Cite as: 520 U. S. 681 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
457 U. S., at 749.29 Thus, while we suspect that even in our modern era there remains some truth to Chief Justice Marshall's suggestion that the duties of the Presidency are not entirely "unremitting," United States v. Burr, 25 F. Cas. 30, 34 (No. 14,692d) (CC Va. 1807), we accept the initial premise of the Executive's argument.
It does not follow, however, that separation-of-powers principles would be violated by allowing this action to proceed. The doctrine of separation of powers is concerned with the allocation of official power among the three coequal branches of our Government. The Framers "built into the tripartite Federal Government . . . a self-executing safeguard against the encroachment or aggrandizement of one branch at the expense of the other." Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S., at 122.30 Thus, for example, the Congress may not exercise the judicial power to revise final judgments, Plaut v. Spendthrift
29 We noted in Fitzgerald: "Article II, § 1, of the Constitution provides that '[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States . . . .' This grant of authority establishes the President as the chief constitutional officer of the Executive Branch, entrusted with supervisory and policy responsibilities of utmost discretion and sensitivity. These include the enforcement of federal law—it is the President who is charged constitutionally to 'take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed'; the conduct of foreign affairs—a realm in which the Court has recognized that '[i]t would be intolerable that courts, without the relevant information, should review and perhaps nullify actions of the Executive taken on information properly held secret'; and management of the Executive Branch— a task for which 'imperative reasons requir[e] an unrestricted power [in the President] to remove the most important of his subordinates in their most important duties.' " 457 U. S., at 749-750 (footnotes omitted).
30 See Loving v. United States, 517 U. S. 748, 756-757 (1996); Mistretta v. United States, 488 U. S. 361, 382 (1989) ("[C]oncern of encroachment and aggrandizement . . . has animated our separation-of-powers jurisprudence"); The Federalist No. 51, p. 349 (J. Cooke ed. 1961) ("[T]he great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others").
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