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This article introduces two newly available sources of data on presidents' legislative programs. The first consists of administration legislative initiatives cleared by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for submission to Congress. We refer to these records as "OMB logs" because they record OMB's clearance actions on executive‐branch legislative proposals. The second consists of memoranda, officially called Statements of Administration Policy, that OMB sends to floor leaders detailing the president's position on legislation pending floor consideration. We compare these new data on presidents' legislative initiatives and policy preferences with those contained in currently available sources—The Public Papers of the Presidents and Congressional Quarterly's scoring of presidential positions on roll‐call votes—and with a long available but seldom used fifth source, the Congressional Record. Both new data sources list bills and legislative preferences that are not included in the currently available sources. We illustrate the value of these new data by calculating presidents' impressive "legislative effectiveness" in the House when all presidential initiatives are taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of executive power in the United States began in the aftermath of the nation's involvement in World War II. Slightly earlier, the Soviet Unions expansion of executive power began in 1917 with the Bolshevik Revolution. Aside from chronology, there were few differences between the expansion of executive power fostered by both global superpowers early in their nationhood. For example, both countries pride themselves in strong executive power, including primarily the ability to detain perceived enemies, convicts, and war criminals. The United States judiciary has repeatedly given enormous deference to the President on these issues, allowing the President to detain individuals nearly absolutely. Furthermore, the ostensible constraints the Constitution places on presidential power have been weakened by judicial precedent, such that the President can easily evade those constraints. Lastly, without a firm definition of what constitutes war, the President has acquired the authority to exercise wartime prerogatives and commit troops without congressional authorization. This Note posits a hypothetical scenario, mirroring the Stalin regime's Gulags, against which to test current United States law's weak constraints. The few limitations that have been placed on the Executive Branch have been inadequate and are in desperate need of repair. In the face of little congressional opposition, Presidents have expanded executive power. One such power is virtually unlimited discretionary detention power. In order to reign in this expansive power, the United States should pass and ratify a new constitutional amendment aimed at limiting executive poioer. In this way, the United States can do what the Soviet Union failed to do--prevent massive political incarcerations in Gulag concentration camps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

President Trump issued a proclamation in December 2017 purporting to remove two million acres in southern Utah from national monument status, radically shrinking the Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument and splitting the Bears Ears National Monument into two residual protected areas. Whether the President has the power to revise or revoke existing monuments under the Antiquities Act, which creates the national monument system, is a new question of law for a 112-year-old statute that has been used by Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama to protect roughly fifteen million acres of federal land and hundreds of millions of marine acres. If President Trump's shrinkages stand, they will be the largest removal of public lands from protected status in U.S. history, and will put the remaining national monuments on the chopping block. This Article advances a novel theory showing that the President lacks the power to revise or revoke monuments. The Antiquities Act gives a power only to protect public lands, not to remove them from protection. Arguments developed so far in litigation and scholarship fail to recognize a general feature of publiclands law: It consistently denies the President the power unilaterally to remove lands from statutorily protected categories once they are placed within those categories. The Antiquities Act should be read to be consistent with this fieldwide pattern. The Article explicates the reasons for this pattern. Generally speaking, public-lands law has been very little theorized; but it needs a theory now. Publiclands law is a field defined by structured normative pluralism. It integrates a range of deeply conflicting public-lands purposes, from mining and drilling to wilderness preservation, across a range of statutes and agencies and acreage totaling nearly a third of the land area of the United States. The asymmetric premise against any presidential power to remove lands from protection is rooted in this structure, specifically the President's obligation to preserve for Congress the option of protecting lands, and the dangers of hasty or corrupt presidential action. The Article traces these rationales across the history of statutory, executive, and judicial articulations of public-lands law and shows that they apply to the present Antiquities Act dispute. The Article also highlights the political and cultural dimensions of the dispute: a series of three-way conflicts among "public-lands populists" who seek increased use of and access to public lands (whose agenda the Trump Administration has incorporated into its economic and ethno-national populism), recreationists and environmentalists, and indigenous communities in the Bears Ears region. Conflicts among these groups amount to fights over collective identity--the nature of the "public" that public lands should serve. This dimension of the conflict does not fall outside the doctrinal analysis of the Antiquities Act. Rather, with a clear theoretical view of public-lands law, it is possible to see that these agendas are already integral to the field itself. They are central threads of its pluralism, and their competing claims fit within its structure. An account of the larger field of cultural conflict both enriches the theory of public-lands law and helps to show how the field should resolve the present fight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a presumption of regularity in America's judicial review of the executive branch, and it mentions U.S. Supreme Court (Supreme Court) cases and a travel ban involving majority-Muslim nations which was issued by American President Donald Trump's Administration. According to the article, the Supreme Court has used the phrase presumption of regularity in 59 legal cases between 1900 and 2018. Presumptions involving prosecutors and administrative agencies are assessed.

This article analyzes the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 and the evolving role of the federal government in educational policy. We rely on John Kingdon’s policy window framework to evaluate how key political constituencies on both the political right and left pressured Congress to limit both the executive branch and federal roles in educational policy. We find that policies during the Obama Administration shifted political attitudes on key issues and within key constituencies that had previously supported a stronger federal role. We conclude with a discussion of how this shift in federal education policy can yield insights applicable to other policy areas and also how this informs the current direction of federal^state relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emil Kirdorf is known for his early promotion activities for the National Socialism. While research has centered his role in financing the National Socialist Party since the second half of the 1920s, this paper considers the conditions of his rise to one of the most influential business managers in the Ruhr-valley in the days of the German Empire. In fact, Kirdorf ’s future prospect was not promising when he began working in this area in 1871. The weaving mill of his father had crashed and it was only by the mediation of his brother that he was recruited as a finance director (book keeper) for a small coal-mine in the Ruhr-valley. When he was hired for managing the Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG, a company that was mainly founded by the Disconto-Gesellschaft in 1873, he became its appointed director. This company developed into one of the greatest coal and steel companies in Europe. Although Kirdorf ’s authority as a director was highly restricted in the first years, he managed to increase his executive powers by his campaign for concentration and cartelization in the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about George Washington as a presidential leader, but little attention has been given to one important aspect of the first president's administration: his role in funding and constructing the nation's new capital city in the District of Columbia. This article highlights Washington's involvement in the creation of the Federal City by focusing on the choices he faced and decisions he made regarding Washington, DC during the last six months he was in office and showing that in terms of this facet of his presidency, he was truly a hands-on leader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of power in public law in relation to the history of the U.S. Supreme Court, and it mentions American constitutionalism and constraints in state power, as well as U.S. constitutional law. Presidential (executive) power, federalism, and a separation of powers doctrine are examined, as well as the U.S. Congress' powers and the efforts to create a constitutional balance in America. Government institutions and constitutional structure are assessed.

The article discusses the U.S. President's duty to faithfully execute the laws of the nation as of 2016, and it mentions America's separation of powers doctrine, executive power under Article II of the U.S. Constitution, and various interpretations of the presidential execution duty throughout history. American constitutional law is assessed, along with U.S. President Barack Obama's views and those of several ex-leaders such as James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, and Benjamin Harrison.

Over the past quarter century, administrative law scholars have observed the President's growing control over agency policymaking and the separation-of-powers concerns implicated by such unilateral exercises of power. The paradigmatic form of agency policymaking--notice-andcomment rulemaking--mitigates these concerns by ensuring considerable oversight by the courts, Congress, and the public at large. Agencies, however, typically have at their disposal a variety of policymaking tools with which to implement White House goals, including the issuance of guidance documents and the strategic exercise of enforcement discretion. While commentators have drawn attention to the risk that agencies will circumvent the extensive checks associated with rulemaking by issuing a guidance document instead, this Article argues that the potential for an agency to forego both rulemaking and guidance documents in favor of the strategic exercise of enforcement discretion poses a greater threat of unchecked unilateral power. It presents a case study of the use of these different policymaking tools in the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR), finding that while agencies are able to weaken external checks on presidential policy preferences by employing guidance documents instead of rulemaking, they can virtually eliminate such checks by implementing White House goals through the strategic exercise of enforcement discretion. This Article closes by evaluating potential reforms to temper politically motivated exercises of enforcement discretion, focusing not only on external mechanisms of oversight, but also on the role of the civil service bureaucracy within the agency itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Independent regulatory agencies are some of the most powerful institutions in the United States, and we think of them today as designed to be insulated from political control. This Article shows that their origins were the opposite: this model first emerged in the late nineteenth century because it offered more political control. The modern executive's design of unitary presidential control over most offices, alongside "independent" regulatory agencies, took shape in the winter of 1886-1887. Congress repealed the Tenure of Office Act, giving the President the unchecked power to dismiss principal officers and ending the Senate's power to protect those officers. Shortly afterward, Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission ("ICC"), the first model for the modern independent agency. These two innovations are a basic foundation for the modern executive branch: the unitary executive's power over most offices, alongside independent regulatory commissions that are sometimes called a "fourth branch of government." This structural change was triggered by a sudden and significant transformation in American campaign finance. In the nineteenth century, parties relied on "assessments": Officeholders paying a percentage of their salary as a kickback to their party. Due to the federal prohibition of patronage assessments in 1876 and 1883, the Senate had less incentive to fight for its power over federal offices and assessment money, and the parties were forced to adopt our more recognizable modern system of large special interest campaign contributions. The Senate suddenly needed to increase its access to railroad money, and the ICC was the Senate's means of attracting that money. The existing scholarship on the ICC generally contends that Congress was "shifting responsibility," decreasing its own power so that it could punt difficult issues and delegate them to a new commission. To the contrary, this Article shows that the Senate and the President were seizing power, not punting away thorny questions. The ICC was a rejection of a far more independent enforcement model (private civil litigation in federal or state courts) in favor of a shared political accountability model (a commission nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate for six-year terms). This story shows how sudden changes in campaign finance triggered dramatic changes in constitutional design and set the foundation for the modern executive branch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a debate within the first U.S. Congress concerning the constitutional power of the U.S. president to remove officers of the executive branch and whether the power of impeachment was the only option for removal. According to the article, the debate was sparked by a proposal by U.S. representative James Madison and Congress eventually granted the president the power to remove executive officers. The article discusses the significance to which members of Congress attached the question, particularly concerning the concept of the essentialism of the U.S. Constitution.

How does the institutional design of a state's bureaucracy affect foreign policy? We argue that institutions can moderate bureaucrats' incentives to act in accordance with an Executive's diplomatic preferences. Where the Executive can influence budgets or career paths, bureaucrats face incentives to adopt her diplomatic goals as their own. Where agencies are shielded from Executive influence, bureaucrats are free to act independently in a bid to enhance their autonomy and their reputation for competence. To test these expectations, we develop a new measure of bureaucratic independence for the 15 aid-giving agencies in the US government. We analyze how independence affects foreign aid allocation patterns over the 1999-2010 period. We find that in 'dependent' agencies, foreign aid flows track the diplomatic objectives of the president. In 'independent' agencies, aid flows appear less responsive to presidential priorities and more responsive to indicators of need in the recipient country. Our results highlight limits on the diplomatic use of foreign aid and emphasize the importance of domestic institutional design. Our findings yield insight into a broad range of policy domains-including international finance, immigration, and the application of economic sanctions-where multiple government agencies are in charge of implementing foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout history, presidents have invoked a broad array of powers. Some are legitimate and well grounded; others exceed constitutional boundaries and have met defeat in Congress, the courts, and the public. Still others originate from historical errors by the Supreme Court, particularly in the field of external affairs. The powers analyzed in this article begin with these: enumerated, implied, inherent, prerogative, ministerial, and discretionary. Presidential instruments of power include executive orders and proclamations. The erroneous “sole organ” doctrine, first appearing in the Curtiss-Wright case of 1936, was at issue in the Jerusalem passport case of Zivotofsky v. Kerry. The scope of unilateral executive authority is being tested in initiatives by the Obama administration in the field of immigration policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Congressional delegation choices are widely studied, but scholars have overlooked the states as an inherent part of this process. How do members of Congress with state constituents delegate responsibility to the states? This article incorporates states and legislators with state-based interests in a theory of intergovernmental delegation and argues that members of Congress consider their relationship with their state government vis-à-vis their connection with the national executive branch as they make intergovernmental delegation choices. This theory is tested against current explanations of decentralization: Republican devolution, average partisan congruence between Congress and the states, and policy type using a novel data set spanning over 30 years, 30,000 provisions, and 197 significant laws. Not only is support for the theory of intergovernmental delegation found, but alternative explanations fail to explain the degree of responsibility delegated to the states in national law, demonstrating the importance of national and state political contexts on delegation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the scope of U.S. executive power as of 2015, and it mentions America's constitutional history and a war powers resolution in relation to U.S. national security. America's Constitution and several former U.S. presidents such as George W. Bush are addressed, as well as congressional authorization for wars. American constitutional laws and statutes are examined, along with U.S. presidential authority, justiciability, and a separation of powers doctrine.

The defining feature of foreign relations law is that it is distinct from domestic law. Courts have recognized that foreign affairs are political by their nature and thus unsuited to adjudication, that state and local involvement is inappropriate in foreign affairs, and that the President has the lead role in foreign policymaking. In other words, they have said that foreign relations are exceptional. But foreign relations exceptionalism -- the belief that legal issues arising from foreign relations are functionally, doctrinally, and even methodologically distinct from those arising in domestic policy -- was not always the prevailing view. In the early twentieth century, a revolution took place in foreign relations law. Under the intellectual leadership of Justice Sutherland, the Supreme Court adopted the idea that foreign affairs are an exceptional sphere of policymaking, separate from domestic law and best suited to exclusively federal, and primarily executive, control. The exceptionalist approach has dominated foreign relations law since that time, but it has always had questionable foundations. Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a second revolution in foreign relations law, one whose scope and significance rival the Sutherland revolution, but one that has gone largely unrecognized. Over the last twenty-five years, the Supreme Court has increasingly rejected the idea that foreign affairs are different from domestic affairs. Instead, it has started treating foreign relations issues as if they were run-of-the-mill domestic policy issues, suitable for judicial review and governed by ordinary separation of powers and statutory interpretation principles. This "normalization" of foreign relations law has taken place in three waves. It began with the end of the Cold War and the rise of globalization in the 1990s. It continued -- counterintuitively -- during the war on terror, despite the strong case for exceptionalism in a time of exigency. And it has proceeded, during the Roberts Court, to undermine justiciability, federalism, and executive dominance -- the very heart of exceptionalism. This Article documents the normalization of foreign relations law over the last twenty-five years. It demonstrates how normalization can be applied to a wide variety of doctrines and debates in foreign relations law, ranging from the proper interpretation of Youngstown to the applicability of administrative law doctrines in foreign affairs to reforms in the foreign sovereign immunity and state secrets regimes. Ultimately, this Article argues that courts and scholars should embrace normalization as the new paradigm for foreign relations law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Essay argues that there are two unappreciated aspects of U.S. constitutional design that have contributed to our country's success. The first is the fact that the United States is divided into fifty rather than four states. This greatly strengthens the national government and renders secession almost impossible. The second is the formidable set of checks and balances set up on presidential power that makes it impossible for U.S. presidents to become dictators. The fact that thirty-nine of the fifty state governors are elected in off-year or midterm elections, elections in which the incumbent president's party almost always loses ground to the opposition, greatly limits U.S. presidential power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article gives an account of late medieval theories and practices of emergency powers. More particularly, it examines the relation between emergency powers and constitutional change. It thus seeks to explain how, in the course of the 13th and 14th centuries, European rulers began using their emergency powers to gradually expand their fiscal and legislative competences at the expense of local authorities and the church. As is demonstrated in this article, it was essentially the normalization of emergency powers that made the transition towards a more centralized government possible. This can be explained by a combination of factors, including the government's claim to an exclusive right to judge what constituted a public necessity, the new focus on prevention and preparation for future necessities, and the increasing identification of necessity with more general claims to 'public utility' and the 'common welfare'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article establishes that transitions of power from one presidential administration to the next can act as a source of uncertainty regarding whom citizens view as responsible for national conditions. I argue that citizens confront this ambiguity in a partisan manner when making responsibility attributions of credit and blame. Using the economy and the Iraq War as examples, ordinary partisans frequently ascribe responsibility using motivated reasoning by crediting the president of their own political party for perceived successes and blaming the president of the opposite party for perceived failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a message submitted to Congress on January 22, 1807, President Jefferson called attention to activities by a combination of private individuals who had endangered the nation. Admitting that a mixture of rumors and suspicions made it difficult to determine the actual facts, he nevertheless chose to identify Aaron Burr as the principal actor 'whose guilt is placed beyond question.' In advance of a trial, submission and evaluation of evidence, and final verdict by a court, Jefferson publicly found Burr guilty of treasonous conduct punishable by hanging. What prompted Jefferson to make this accusation and what constitutional and legal violations occurred in his pursuit of Burr? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a hasty response to the 9/11 attacks, Congress authorized the 'war' against al-Qaeda in a statute known as the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). It was meant to be a temporary grant of powers to allow the president to fight the perpetrators of the attack. This article analyzes how two very different presidents have used the 2001 AUMF to justify controversial policies in ways unforeseen by its congressional makers, resulting in an accruement of power to the executive branch that could become long term, if not permanent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reprint of the article "War, Depression, and the Presidency, 1933-50," by Clinton Rossiter, which appeared in volume 17, number 4 of the journal in December 1950. The article discusses the U.S.'s Great Depression, World War II in the U.S. and American executive, or presidential, and emergency powers from 1933 through 1950. An overview of the relationship between the U.S. Congress and the president, including the constitutional nature of the relationship and Congress's relationship with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, is provided.

This paper examines the legal and political arguments of those who support an expansive interpretation of US executive power in the face of threats to the state, taking a comparative historical perspective. It discusses the rationale for this approach by locating its historical origins in international and American jurisprudence, thereby placing them in a modern context. Attention is paid to the points made by various legal representatives of the Bush administration such as John Choon Yoo and Jay S. Bybee. Their views on an expansive response to state emergencies are based on a reading of executive power that informs the Bush administration's approach to law between 2001 and 2008. But this paper goes further in arguing that a common political-juridical ground exists between various critics of the Bush administration, and those who formulated the policies of torture and rendition. This common ground on the subject of executive power in response to emergency lies primarily in the examination of the state of exception examined by Giorgio Agamben. This approach has various implications as to the general exercise of power by the executive in a democratic system. Legem non habet necessitas. Necessity knows no law. Augustine, Soliloquium, 2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In United States v . Morrison, the Supreme Court announced the rule that the Section 5 power cannot be used to regulate private individuals. This is one of the most meaningful and, thus far, durable constraints that the Court has placed on federal power. It is the more surprising, then, that it turns out to be based on essentially nothing at all. The Morrison Court asserted that its rule was derived by--indeed, "controlled by"--precedent, but a closer reading of the Reconstruction-era decisions it cites shows that this is simply not the case. An independent evaluation of the rule against regulation of private individuals suggests that it cannot be defended on its own merits. Thus, the Article urges that Morrison be overruled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the changed role of the Italian presidency and the impact and legacy of Silvio Berlusconi on this. After consideration of some of the methodological difficulties raised by these issues, the article looks at the role of the presidency up to 1992, when the presidency was interpreted in narrow terms set by the framers of the 1948 constitution and by the predominance of the party leaders of the period over the political direction of the State. The article considers how presidents from Sandro Pertini (1978–85) on, sought in different ways to expand the political role of their office. The article analyses the different ways that Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and Giorgio Napolitano used their formal and informal powers both to maintain the status of the office and to promote political goals, and concludes with an assessment of the likely long-term impact of these changes and of Berlusconi's role in them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is said that the Great Depression and the New Deal era fundamentally altered the role that America's federal government played in American society as the American public increasingly turned to the national government for solutions to social and economic problems. Each branch of the federal government changed as a result of this increased public interest. Congress, for instance, began passing more laws on an increasingly large array of topics, and as the constitutionality of these laws was challenged in court, America's judicial system had more statutory interpretation questions filling its docket. These changes to America's legislative and judicial systems, however, are dwarfed by those of its executive branch of government. During this era, the presidency became the most prominent branch of the federal government, and as a result, the President began exerting more authority in all aspects of governing, including congressional lawmaking. The post-New Deal Presidents also sought to extend the executive branch's influence over the judiciary's role in interpreting legislation by more frequently issuing signing statements that articulated their Administration's understanding of a law. These Presidents hoped that such articulations would result in greater judicial resolution of legislative ambiguity issues in the executive branch's favor. The judiciary, though, has largely disregarded the President's increased role in the lawmaking process as it has tackled statutory interpretation questions. For instance, the courts often resolve ambiguity in statutory text by looking to extrinsic interpretative aids like legislative history in order to ascertain the congressional intent behind the statute. Presidential interpretative aids such as signing statements, in contrast, are only occasionally consulted. The notion that the courts should consult presidential materials, i.e. "executive history," for statutory interpretation purposes is a controversial topic; some have even argued that the practice itself is unconstitutional. This Article first examines the constitutional concerns surrounding judicial use of executive history and shows that the practice is constitutional for statutory interpretation purposes. However, like any judicial interpretative aid, presidential materials have varying degrees of reliability and authoritative value. This Article accordingly proposes a new organizational scheme for executive history in general—a hierarchal model similar to the one that exists for legislative history—and thus shows what types of executive history the courts should be more inclined to reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the sensitivity of Congress to statements of administration policy (SAPs) and signing statements in the struggle with the executive over policy. We hypothesize that the nature and use of objections contained in these presidential communications generates additional congressional oversight. To test whether this happens, we developed a dataset with all SAPs, signing statements, and congressional oversight hearings from 1997 through 2007. The results indicate that the type and number of objections raised in presidential communications affects congressional oversight activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parliamentary oversight of the military constitutes an important element of the civilian control of the armed forces. However, the strength of parliaments in this realm varies greatly across democracies and little is known about the sources of this variation. We propose an explanation for one key aspect of this variation: why does parliament enjoy veto power over military deployments in some democracies but not in others? Our analysis of data from forty-nine democracies around the world suggests that at least three factors account for parliamentary strength or weakness in this realm: the external threat to which a country is exposed, its constitutional tradition, and the experience of severe military failure in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The age of the drone has dawned. Rapid technological development will soon permit the government to deploy micro-scale self-sustaining drones with networked surveillance and precision kinetic capabilities. A recent U.S. Air Force video describes these planned micro-drones as "unobtrusive, pervasive, and lethal." Even if moral and international law concerns about drones used for targeted killings are set aside, current U.S. policy concerning drone use is inadequate to protect the public from possible abuses of executive power. In particular, the judicial branch should play a role in evaluating targeted drone killings, particularly outside an active war zone and at least to the extent U.S. citizens may be impacted directly or as collateral damage. Although the judicial branch has historically played only a limited role with respect to national security and wartime executive branch decisions, there is valuable precedent dating back to the Militia Act of 1792 for ex ante judicial review of the President's use of military force on U.S. soil. Current proposals for a drone court that would utilize a warrant process similar to that employed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act are a good start, but the standards and procedures of the FISA Court are in important ways inadequate. Congress should establish a limited-jurisdiction judicial branch tribunal that could provide an important independent measure of accountability over the use of killer drones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most political scientists assume that American presidents seek to optimize their chances of reelection and to maximize their policy preferences in strategic negotiations with their rivals. Presidents, however, have also been pressed throughout history to restrain their self-aggrandizing aims when confronted with what they take to be exigencies of governance. This article examines the governing challenges met by presidents of the early national and antebellum periods, and argues that the distinctive conditions of governance that defined the pre-Civil War polity motivated a pattern of unionist presidential restraint, prompting presidents to refrain from direct applications of federal coercion and to balance the interests of geographic sections of the Union. Presidents' preoccupation with unionism, this article argues, was ever present in this period. The article examines a diverse set of case studies to make this argument and concludes with a discussion of how changes wrought by the Civil War led to the emergence of new patterns of restraint exercised by subsequent generations of American presidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the theory of presidential representation by examining its development from 1800 to 1864. In particular, it returns to the critics of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln and presents new evidence that the concept of presidential representation not only remained contested throughout this period but also grew more entangled with rival claims of representation and alternative arguments for executive power. By exploring the early development of the theory of presidential representation, the article contributes to the ongoing scholarly task of classifying arguments about the foundations of executive power and attempts to link literatures regarding the constitutional and political sources of presidential power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Richard Neustadt, scholarship on the presidency tends to focus on presidents as single-minded seekers of political power. But, precisely because of the grandness of their political stage, presidents may, in fact, have constitutional ambitions concerning not how much power they will have but how they will wield their constitutional powers. James Madison's presidency provides an important case study of a president's constitutional ambitions. Entering office with constitutional concerns about the power of the presidency relative to the other branches, Madison used his own presidency and especially the War of 1812 to model a new type of constitutional office that he thought would fit better in the system of the separation of powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presidential cabinet has long been neglected by political scientists and political historians. The former tend to dismiss the cabinet as a noninstitution that has never transcended its lack of constitutional foundation; the latter have generally ignored it. Focusing on the progressive era, and upon one of Woodrow Wilson's most prominent cabinet secretaries, this article argues for a reconsideration of the presidential cabinet and its individual members as important policy and political actors during a time of increasing federal government competency but as yet unformed White House executive agencies and staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A summary is presented of the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 which reportedly deals with American war powers and a U.S. President's authority to transfer military detainees from the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center in Cuba to other foreign countries.

Often treated as a unified concept with a single definition, the presidential mandate actually encompasses multiple definitions, each connected to distinct ideas about democracy and presidential leadership. This article looks at how and when modern presidents have used mandate rhetoric and seeks to explain changes in presidential mandate-claiming patterns. Using an original dataset of 1,467 presidential communications from 1933 through 2009, I find that after 1969presidents became more likely to use election results to justify their actions. However, they also became less likely to emphasize the magnitude of the election result, focusing their mandate rhetoric instead on campaign promises and distinctions between candidates and parties. Evidence suggests that this shift is the result of a combination of several factors: changes to the presidential nomination system, polarized party politics, and an overall decline in presidential approval ratings. Based on this research, I conclude that ideas about the presidential mandate are closely connected with the political conditions and challenges facing presidents. As the place of the presidency has shifted in American politics, the ways in which presidents interpret and communicate about elections have also changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enforcement of law is at the core of the President's constitutional duty to "take Care" that the laws are faithfully executed, and it is a primary mechanism for effecting national regulatory policy. Yet questions about how presidents oversee agency enforcement activity have received surprisingly little scholarly attention. This Article provides a positive account of the President's role in administrative enforcement, explores why presidential enforcement has taken the shape it has, and examines the bounds of the President's enforcement power. It demonstrates that presidential involvement in agency enforcement, though extensive, has been ad hoc, crisis-driven, and frequently opaque. The Article thus reveals the need for institutional design reforms--namely more coordination across agencies and greater disclosure of enforcement policy. The seeds for such reforms can be found in several recent efforts that have yet to be made systematic. Concerns about politicization of law enforcement should not override the considerable benefits that would derive. Rather, by acknowledging the President's role in, and responsibility for, enforcement, we can better ensure the structure and transparency that promote appropriate presidential influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States' national security establishment lacks an integrated strategic planning capability. The current National Security Council ( NSC) system relies heavily on part-time committees that lack the clout and time to execute strategic planning. The president could overcome this difficulty by looking to President Eisenhower's NSC system. Eisenhower's NSC relied on a Planning Board-which was neither a part-time committee nor fulltime staff-to get realistic planning that was not captive to parochial interests and to foster a national, strategic mindset without falling prey to an ivory-tower mind-set divorced from reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the 1862 elections in Illinois. It examines the significance of the elections in the context of the ongoing U.S. Civil War, the expansion of U.S. government authority during the war by the administration of then-U.S. president Abraham Lincoln and the U.S. Congress, and the fortunes of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The article discusses U.S. policy on the emancipation of slaves, legislation known as the Legal Tender Act, and the military draft.

An essay is presented on the passive-aggressive nature of executive power in America as of August 2013, focusing on the legal aspects of incidents in which the executive branch in the U.S. refuses to enforce the nation's laws regarding issues such as drugs, deportation, and the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). State death penalty laws and executions are mentioned, as well as the U.S. Congress' passage of the National Maximum Speed Law in 1974. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency is examined.

An essay is presented on equal protection and the executive branch in America as of August 2013, focusing on the U.S. Congress, the Thirteenth Amendment to the nation's Constitution, and efforts to restrict racial discrimination in the U.S. The legal rights of African Americans are addressed, along with America's Reconstruction and the election of U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. Republicans and Democrats in the 1800s are examined, along with popular votes and the electoral college.

An essay is presented on former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, his singing of the Emancipation Proclamation (EP), and executive power in America as of August 2013. An analysis is provided regarding Lincoln's constitutional authority to issue the EP during the 19th century. The ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is mentioned, along with a separation of powers and the Take Care Clause in the U.S. Constitution is examined.

The article discusses executive power in the U.S. in relation to former American President Abraham Lincoln and motion picture director Steven Spielberg's film "Lincoln" which deals with then-U.S. President Lincoln's political maneuverings which were designed to save the union and abolish slavery. Actor Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal of American President Lincoln is mentioned, along with then-U.S. President George W. Bush's role in the liberation of the Iraqi people from a reported tyranny.

Republican thinkers normally have considered prerogative powers natural and necessary to a state's survival. Yet Americans are suspicious of these powers, despite their frequent use. This paper draws a consequential distinction between the legitimacy of prerogative as such and the dangers of its use. Employing the Roman dictatorship to illustrate the stakes, I demonstrate that, while the Romans were cautious with the Dictatorship, they embraced its legitimacy in a broader context of a self-consciously flexible government and a tradition of innovation. This serves as a vivid contrast with contemporary American perceptions of the sources of constitutional stability. I argue that unwarranted suspicion of flexible government plays an important role in misperceptions about the legitimacy of prerogative power in constitutional regimes. The inevitable dangers of prerogative in action do not suffice to demonstrate its illegitimacy as an institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a number of significant separation of powers decisions, Supreme Court Justices have relied on Congressional silence to support their conclusion that the President had or did not have the power being challenged. Using language such as "implied" grants or denials of authority and "congressional acquiescence" in Presidential actions, the Court has utilized congressional inaction to tilt the outcome for or against Presidential power in cases such as Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, Dames & Moore v. Regan, and Clinton v. City of New York. This Essay argues that reliance on congressional silence in separation of powers litigation is improper for two reasons. First, INS v. Chadha held that positive action by one House of Congress was invalid as an attempt to affect the rights of third parties because it did not comply with the bicameralism and presentment requirements of Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution. Because action by one House alone has no legal effect, inaction cannot have more legal significance. Second, as a normative matter, legislative silence does not logically support the inference that Congress supports the exercise of presidential power. Because no Justice has argued that a single instance of congressional silence would suffice, the courts must struggle with how many instances and how comparable to the present case they must be to support the desired inference. Similarly, there are multiple reasons why Congress did not seek to overrule the President by legislation, or take other action to accomplish that end, that are as consistent with disagreement as with acquiescence in the prior instances on which the Court has relied. Taking silence off the table does not ease the difficulty in deciding separation of powers; rather it forces the Court to return to first principles instead of attempting to divine the meaning of congressional inaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theodore Roosevelt's trust policy has been viewed as “progressive” by his contemporaries, dictated by big business by the New Left, and as a precursor to autonomous institutional development most recently. This thesis will instead analyze Roosevelt's actions through a pragmatic lens. Roosevelt's first legislative action in relation to the trusts was to create the Bureau of Corporations. Whilst seemingly ushering in transparency in business affairs through its reporting function, Roosevelt secured executive jurisdiction over publicly circulating its findings, paving the way for private, state-corporate cooperation. Obtaining sensitive information through the promise of discretion, Roosevelt held an implicit leverage over companies, allowing him to threaten to publicize illegalities if they refused to abandon them. The Bureau became a forum for closed-door agreements which achieved tangible amelioration of practice, whilst minimizing the damage entailed by a public airing of corporate America's dirty laundry. I will analyze several Bureau investigations and illustrate the learning curve by which Roosevelt and big business came to an agreement over the parameters of cooperation. Mired by mixed signals from both sides during its early investigations, the emergence of dialectical negotiations over corporate practice and the extent of government-induced public scrutiny came to embody a fledgling cooperative process. These investigations illustrate the pragmatic means by which Roosevelt pursued a conservative, yet effective, reigning in of big business power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]