<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> <P> Finally, in a very restrictive reading of what constituted interstate commerce, Hughes held that the "' current' or' flow"' of commerce involved was simply too minute to constitute interstate commerce, and subsequently Congress had no power under the Commerce Clause to enact legislation affecting such commercial transactions . The Court dismissed with a bare paragraph the government's ability to regulate wages and hours . Although the government had argued that the national economic emergency required special consideration, Hughes disagreed . The dire economic circumstances the country faced did not justify the overly broad delegation or overreach of the Act, the majority concluded . "Extraordinary conditions may call for extraordinary remedies . But the argument necessarily stops short of an attempt to justify action which lies outside the sphere of constitutional authority . Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power ." </P> <P> Although the decision emasculated NIRA, it had little practical impact, as Congress was unlikely to have reauthorized the Act in any case . </P>

Who benefited from the national industrial recovery act