Opinions

The President, in his constitutional role as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive, might reasonably and lawfully determine that it was justified to use United States Armed Forces personnel to protect those engaged in relief work in Somalia. His authority extended to using U.S. military personnel to protect Somalians and other foreign nationals in Somalia.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has legal authority to participate in a computer matching program with the Department of Education in order to verify the immigration status of alien applicants for federal student aid under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965.

The Department of the Treasury does not have legal authority to index capital gains for inflation by means of regulation.

Under the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, a State may not constitutionally elect its United States Senators from two single-member districts rather than at large.

Federal agencies are not included in the phrase “person or other entity” in the antidiscrimination provision of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1324b(a)(l). Accordingly, the Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices is without authority to bring discrimination charges against federal agencies.

The proposed legislation would enact a federal statutory regime of abortion regulation that leaves the States with substantially less regulatory authority than they have under Roe v. Wade or Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The proposed legislation would represent a doubtful exercise of Congress’ power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment and would rest on a questionable link to Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce.

The formulas in the Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act of 1990, under which farmers repay loans from the Department of Agriculture, contain a scrivener’s error in the organization of the subsections, and the provisions should be read as if the error, which arose in the process of enrollment, had not been made.

Under section 1302 of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, marketing loan provisions that previously had been discretionary would be mandatory for the 1993 through 1995 crop years, if an agricultural trade agreement under the Uruguay Round Negotiations pursuant to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade were not entered into by June 30, 1992, or if this agreement had not entered into force for the United States by June 30, 1993.

The Congressional Pay Amendment, which was originally proposed by Congress to the States for ratification in 1789, and having been ratified by three-fourths of the States, has been ratified pursuant to Article V and is accordingly now part of the Constitution.

Under 1 U.S.C. § 106b, the Archivist was, upon receipt of formal instruments of ratification from the requisite number of States, required to publish the Congressional Pay Amendment along with his certificate specifying that the Amendment has become valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the Constitution.

The Department of Defense may make funds available to the National Science Foundation out of monies appropriated in the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 1991, to support the activities of the Critical Technologies Institute during the 1992 fiscal year.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has statutory authority to contract with the private sector for secure facilities.