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22/23UNDERSTANDING Property Law
We think that the District Court erred in holding that section 202(n) deprived appellee of an
“accrued property right.” 169 F. Supp., at 934. Appellee’s right to Social Security benefits cannot
properly be considered to have been of that order. [p*151]
The Social Security system may be accurately described as a form of social insurance, enacted
pursuant to Congress’ power to “spend money in aid of the “general welfare.’ “ Helvering v.
Davis, [301 U.S. 619,] 640, whereby persons gainfully employed, and those who employ them,
are taxed to permit the payment of benefits to the retired and disabled, and their dependents.
Plainly the expectation is that many members of the present productive work force will in turn
become beneficiaries rather than supporters of the program. But each worker’s benefits, though
flowing from the contributions he made to the national economy while actively employed, are not
dependent on the degree to which he was called upon to support the system by taxation. It is
apparent that the noncontractual interest of an employee covered by the Act cannot be soundly
analogized to that of the holder of an annuity, whose right to benefits is bottomed on his
contractual premium payments. . . .
To engraft upon the Social Security system a concept of “accrued property rights” would
deprive it of the flexibility and boldness in adjustment to everchanging conditions which it
demands. [Citation omitted.] It was doubtless out of an awareness of the need for such flexibility
that Congress included in the original Act, and has since retained a clause expressly reserving to
it “[t]he right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision” of the Act. 1104, 49 Stat. 648, 42 U.S.C. §
1304. . . .
We must conclude that a person covered by the Act has not such a right in benefit payments as
would make every defeasance of “accrued” interests violative of the Due Process Clause of the
Fifth Amendment.
II.
This is not to say, however, that Congress may exercise its power to modify the statutory
, scheme free of all constitutional restraint. The interest of a covered employee under the Act is of
sufficient substance to fall within the protection from arbitrary governmental action afforded by
the Due Process Clause. In judging the permissibility of the cut-off provisions of section 202(n)
from this standpoint, it is not within our authority to determine whether the Congressional
judgment expressed in that section is sound or equitable, or whether it comports well or ill with
the purposes of the Act. . . . Particularly when we deal with a withholding of a noncontractual
benefit under a social welfare program such as this, we must recognize that the Due Process
Clause can be thought to interpose a bar only if the statute manifests a patently arbitrary
classification, utterly lacking in rational justification.
Such is not the case here. The fact of a beneficiary’s residence abroad-in the case of a
deportee, a presumably permanent residence-can be of obvious relevance to the question of
eligibility. One benefit which may be thought to accrue to the economy from the Social Security
system is the increased overall national purchasing power resulting from taxation of productive
elements of the economy to provide payments to the retired and disabled, who might otherwise be
destitute or nearly so, and who would generally spend a comparatively large percentage of their
benefit payments. This advantage would be lost as to payments made to one residing abroad. For
these purposes, it is, of course, constitutionally irrelevant whether this reasoning in fact underlay
the legislative decision, as it is irrelevant that the section does not extend to all to whom the
postulated rationale might in logic apply. [Citations omitted.] Nor, apart from this can it be
deemed irrational for Congress to have concluded that the public purse should not be [p*152]
utilized to contribute to the support of those deported on the grounds specified in the statute.
We need go no further to find support for our conclusion that this provision of the Act cannot
be condemned as so lacking in rational justification as to offend due process.
S628 CONCEPT OF PROPERTY Ch. 7
III.
. . . It is said that the termination of appellee’s benefits amounts to punishing him without a
judicial trial, [citation omitted]; that the termination of benefits constitutes the imposition of
punishment by legislative act, rendering section 202(n) a bill of attainder, [citations omitted]; and
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