# Clinton v. City of New York *Clinton v. City of New York*, 524 U.S. 417 (1998), struck down the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 as a violation of the Presentment Clause. The Court held 6–3 that Congress cannot authorize the president to cancel individual provisions of a duly enacted statute; changing a law requires the full bicameralism-and-presentment process, and the Act had effectively let the president amend legislation unilaterally. For this vault the case supplies the constitutional bookend to [[Train v. City of New York]]: even when **Congress itself consents** to hand the president a line-item cancellation power, the Constitution forbids it. That makes the modern impoundment argument — that the president holds such a power inherently, without any congressional grant — a considerably steeper climb than it is usually presented as being. See [[Power of the Purse]]. > [!note] Stub — fill out > To expand: the Stevens majority, the Scalia and Breyer dissents, the Act's brief operative life, and how the holding interacts with the pocket-rescission theory. ## See Also - [[Power of the Purse]] · [[Train v. City of New York]] · [[Impoundment Control Act]] - [[Separation of Powers]] · [[Unitary Executive Theory]]