<P> Even before these legal aspects became widely known, a number of court challenges to the NIRA were winding their way through the courts . The constitutionality of the NIRA was tested in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935). Courts identified three problems with the NIRA: "(i) was the subject matter sought to be regulated by the power of congress; (ii) if the regulations violated the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution; and (iii) had Congress properly delegated its power to the executive ." </P> <P> Although Roosevelt, most of his aides, Johnson, and the NRA staff felt the Act would survive a court test, the U.S. Department of Justice had on March 25, 1935, declined to appeal an appellate court ruling overturning the lumber industry code on the grounds that the case was not a good test of the NIRA's constitutionality . The Justice Department's action worried many in the administration . But on April 1, 1935 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the NIRA in the Schechter case . Although Donald Richberg and others felt the government's case in Schechter was not a strong one, the Schechters were determined to appeal their conviction . So the government appealed first, and the Supreme Court heard oral argument on May 2 and 3 . </P> <P> On May 27, 1935, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote for a unanimous Court in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States that Title I of the National Industrial Recovery Act was unconstitutional . First, Hughes concluded that the law was void for vagueness because the critical term "fair competition" was nowhere defined in the Act . Second, Hughes found the Act's delegation of authority to the executive branch unconstitutionally overbroad: </P> <P> To summarize and conclude upon this point: Section 3 of the Recovery Act (15 USCA 703) is without precedent . It supplies no standards for any trade, industry, or activity . It does not undertake to prescribe rules of conduct to be applied to particular states of fact determined by appropriate administrative procedure . Instead of prescribing rules of conduct, it authorizes the making of codes to prescribe them . For that legislative undertaking, section 3 sets up no standards, aside from the statement of the general aims of rehabilitation, correction, and expansion described in section 1 . In view of the scope of that broad declaration and of the nature of the few restrictions that are imposed, the discretion of the President in approving or prescribing codes, and thus enacting laws for the government of trade and industry throughout the country, is virtually unfettered . We think that the code - making authority thus conferred is an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power . </P>

When did the national industrial recovery act end