After The Rule Of Law
A new study contends that the Constitution’s structural attempt to limit executive power is now historically and practically outdated. Normatively, an unconstrained executive can deliver more of the...
View ArticleFreedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and...
Held within the vault of the Hoover Institution for decades, Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War, presents the former president’s thoughts on America’s involvement...
View ArticleUnderstanding the Progressive Constitution
During the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked to define the particular political philosophy that best captured her political ideals. She answered by...
View ArticleReigning in the Presidents of War
The drumbeat of war is raging yet again with many calling for American intervention in the Syrian civil war conflict and for American action to eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program. However,...
View ArticleDebating Sovereignty: Globalization, International Law, and the United States...
Globalization is transforming American society. As never before, the U.S. economy depends on international trade, the free flow of capital, and integration into the world financial system....
View ArticleFounding Executive Power in America
I was first introduced to Charles Thach’s Creation of the Presidency, 1775-1789: A Study in Constitutional History, in 1997, when I took Robert Scigliano’s graduate seminar on the presidency at Boston...
View ArticleThe Creation of the Presidency, 1775-1789: A Study in Constitutional History
Fresh from a battle against monarchy, the American Founders were wary of a strong executive, but they were equally conscious that unchecked legislative power risked all the excesses of democracy....
View ArticleTaming International Law with Presidential Supremacy
Editor’s Note: John Yoo responds here There has long been a tension between the requirements of the U.S. Constitution and the commitments of the United States under international law. Indeed, that...
View ArticleFirst Among Equals: Reconsidering Congressional Power in James Burnham’s...
Congress as an institution seems deeply troubled, if not doomed. Public confidence in the institution has fallen to historic lows, at least in the history of mass polling. Meanwhile, its institutional...
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Calvin Coolidge: A President Born on the Fourth of July
Coming after the first progressive wave of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge’s White House tenure boldly challenged their expansive ideas about executive power specifically and...
View ArticleOakeshott and the Separation of Powers
Professor Fuller has provided a very helpful outline of Oakeshott’s conception of the rule of law. The British philosopher is at some of his most difficult here. But this is not to say that Oakeshott...
View ArticleWe Demand to be Ruled: Reflections on a Servile Electorate and its...
It is a logical fallacy and a clinical delusion, and the body politic is suffering from both: magical thinking—the false linkage of causal events, in this case between the president and, well,...
View ArticleDefending the Electoral College
This next edition of Liberty Law Talk is a conversation with Dr. Gary Gregg, author of Securing Democracy: Why We Have an Electoral College, on the foundations of the Electoral College, its connection...
View ArticleAll the President’s Czars
Mitchel A. Sollenberger and Mark J. Rozell have provided a valuable contribution to what is often called the public law approach to the presidency in their recent book, The President’s Czars:...
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George Washington’s Republicanism
The U.S. Constitution mandates that the executive branch will seek the “advice and consent” of the Senate to treaties with foreign powers. Thus, George Washington as President once determined to...
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Speaking Prudence to Power
“The choice you make this November,” implored Governor Mitt Romney in a recent address in Iowa, “will shape great things, historic things, and those things will determine the most intimate and...
View ArticleRestoring the Deliberate Sense of the Community
A friend from high school, distressed by the results of Tuesday’s balloting, circulated a prayerful plea that President Obama’s re-election indicates “our nation is in a sinful state” whose...
View ArticleEnergy in the Executive: Thomas Jefferson’s Transformative Presidency
Jon Meacham concludes his Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power with quotations praising Jefferson from Abraham Lincoln, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. For Meacham, these were our “finest presidents,” and they...
View ArticleFrom Idealism to Power: The Presidency in the Age of Obama
As a presidential candidate in 2007 and 2008, Barack Obama made stirring pledges to respect the rule of law and to abide by constitutional limitations on certain presidential powers. He left no doubt...
View ArticleCombining Executive and Judicial Power
Michael Greve’s earlier post on Administrative Law has inspired me to write a couple of posts about the subject. One of the key issues in Administrative Law is that administrative agencies do not...
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