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An understanding of President Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon is complicated due to conflicting interpretations. While academic response to the pardon is often critical, cultural critics assert it had a healing effect on the nation. Over time, popular opinion regarding the pardon became more positive. This article seeks to answer the following research question: How may scholars best assess the Nixon pardon? This article synthesizes disparate understandings of the pardon by situating a rhetorical analysis of Ford's language within a cultural interpretation of the pardon power. The author concludes the pardon may be best assessed according to non-juridical metrics. In addition, evidence suggests the pardon helped popularize a discourse of mercy and forgiveness among the American people. The findings have important implications for scholars of presidential rhetoric and executive power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presidential management styles vary by each president, with consequences for the structures, processes, and outcomes of American foreign policymaking. Thus, understanding what the United States (U.S.) does in foreign policy in a given administration involves not only the international and domestic context and problems facing the U.S., but also the intersection of: 1) presidential style and personal preferences; 2) key stakeholders, structures and decision-making processes, and; 3) policy choices, which are shaped by the first two factors. However, while it is common to refer to a particular style for a particular president, in fact the same president may simultaneously employ very different styles, with very different policy consequences. This paper examines President Barack Obama's style, structures/processes, and policy outcomes in two policy areas: one in foreign economic policy (the 2008-2009 economic crisis) and one in national security policy (the 2009 Afghanistan "surge" decisions). We conclude that the two cases reveal two very different sets of decision-making dynamics under the same President at roughly the same time. Thus, presidents may have multiple styles, even within the same policy domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, presidential power has been on the rise. This article asserts that excessive executive branch secrecy has been a central root cause. Excessive secrecy has both contributed to the growth of presidential power and has added to its potential for harm. The article touches upon harms from overclassification and from claims of executive privilege and state secrets. It also presents four "what if" questions from the Bush (II), Kennedy, Eisenhower, and Truman Administrations about how American history might have been changed (for the better) if crucial secrets had been revealed. But the heart of the paper is its analysis of how the shaping of secret decisions by presidents listening only to a small coterie of like-minded advisors increases the likelihood of unwise, or even abusive, decisions. Examples discussed are decisions to use torture (Bush II); expand the domestic jurisdiction of the FBI (FDR); have the CIA engage in covert action (Truman); and Iran/Contra (Reagan). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of the unitary executive is sometimes used to suggest that Article II's "executive power" extends to complete control of the executive branch. While presidents have rarely come close to that ideal, for some decades administrative strategies have been key to how presidents have exercised control over governmental outcomes -- and thus, to how they have exercised power. In thinking about the future of presidential power, this essay traces how recent developments in presidential administrative strategies have tilted the bureaucratic playing field in favor of the executive branch. It stresses the role of appointments, regulatory review, managerial directives, and the theoretic underpinning of these through the invocation of presidential "rights" that lead from the Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush administrations to the choices facing Barack Obama. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eras of excessive claims of presidential power are often followed by congressional and judicial efforts to trim back or monitor that power. This pattern occurred in response to the "imperial presidency" of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Congress in the mid-1970s passed such laws as the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and when the Supreme Court, for example, denied a president's claim of executive privilege in U.S. v. Nixon (1974). Three decades later, it is possible to see that many of the statutory reforms and judicial principles that were generated by those efforts to reduce executive excess have had the paradoxical effect of legitimizing the very power they sought to curb and, at times, have extended to the president even greater authority than existed previously. Reasons for this "reverse effect" are, in part, the legislative compromises accepted as the price for passage and judicial decisions that misinterpreted congressional intent or left loopholes to be exploited in future cases. The recent change of administration provides Congress and the Court, once again, with the opportunity to review executive branch overreaching by the Bush presidency over the past eight years and to determine how to scale back excessive claims of executive power. Lessons from the past offer a cautionary tale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presidential war powers jurisprudence is as unsettled as it is controversial.In this paper, I argue that the Supreme Court's rulings in the field are best understood as political phenomena — that is, as evidence of institutional rivalries between different branches of the federal government.Focusing on cases involving wartime detainees, I find that the Court takes a surprising approach.Even where Justices share the president's political ideology, there is a tendency to parse constitutional language quite strictly, a reluctance to bend even in the face of important national security exigencies, and a tendency to declare the executive's actions unconstitutional.Tracing this to Justice Black's opinion in the landmark Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer case, I refer to it as a kind of constitutional formalism.Moreover, I note that the Court tends to adopt the formalist approach in a predictable way, using it wherever assertions of presidential authority seem to encroach upon the Court's own institutional competences.The analysis therefore forecasts that the Court will likely continue to hold presidential powers in check where cases involve such matters as habeas corpus and military tribunals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past six decades, presidents have decided to violate the law by invoking the concept of "inherent" powers, claiming that these independent and exclusive actions may not be checked by Congress or the courts. To conceal illegal operations, executive officials lie to Congress and withhold information from courts. Buttressing these unilateral actions is the state secrets privilege, which administrations have relied on to keep documents from federal judges and private plaintiffs. When Congress and the courts defer to executive claims, often in the name of "national security," the political and constitutional system pays a great price and individual liberties are put at risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the institutional contributions to presidential hegemony over the nation's foreign policy. Executive aggrandizement of foreign affairs powers rests on a faulty assertion of constitutional and legal claims and misplaced policy assumptions. It hinges, moreover, on extravagant assertions of presidential prerogative and emergency powers and false allusions to historical precedents. At all events, presidential domination of American foreign policy finds no support in the constitutional text, the discussions and debates in Philadelphia or in the architecture of the Constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses reports published within this issue on the wartime powers of American presidents from the administrations of Abraham Lincoln to George W. Bush, which also considers subjects including the Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton, the U.S. Constitution, and the U.S.'s position as a global power.