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Is it possible to give contemporary shape to the principles of constitutional structure we know as" separation of powers"? That question was sharply presented once again on the final day of the Supreme Court's most recent Term, when it decided two cases raising separation-of-powers issues. In Bowsher v. Synar, I the subject of this symposium, the Court found constitutional fault in Congress's asserted expansion of its own powers at the expense of the President's article II authority. Commodity Future Trading Commission v.

Schor, 2 far less widely noted, upheld against constitutional challenge Congress's assignment to an administrative adjudicator of the power to resolve a counterclaim arising under state common law, that might have been thought to require disposition by an article III court. The basic problem facing the Court in each case was accommodating the enormously complex and varied structure of the …