Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. An Imperial Presidency? -- 2. How Americans Think about Unilateral Action -- Appendix to Chapter 2 -- 3. Congressional Pushback in the Public Sphere -- Appendix to Chapter 3 -- 4. Rethinking the Role of the Courts -- Appendix to Chapter 4 -- 5. A Popular Check on Unilateralism -- Appendix to Chapter 5 -- 6. Pathways of Political Constraint -- 7. Democratic Decline? -- Notes -- References -- Index.

The state of American federalism in 2017–2018 is characterized by federal policy reversals, as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans continue to undo many of the Obama administration's policies. Two themes are highlighted in this essay. First, major policy changes continue to be undertaken primarily through unilateral executive action, even with Republicans holding the presidency and both the House and Senate. Ideological divisions within the Republican Party prevented Congress from enacting major legislation, save for a tax reform measure, and resulted in policy changes on health care, immigration, and the environment being made through executive and administrative action. Another prominent feature of governance in the early part of the Trump administration has been state resistance to federal directives, taking the form primarily but not exclusively of state attorney general (AG) lawsuits. Democratic AGs filed lawsuits challenging Trump administration actions on immigration and clean energy in particular. Democratic governors and state legislators also took a variety of other actions to resist Trump administration policies. The federal courts also continue to play an active role in shaping and adjudicating controversies impacting federalism.

In the 1936 case of United States v. Curtiss‐Wright Export Corp., the U.S. Supreme Court reasoned that the president is the sole organ of foreign affairs given implicitly through the commander‐in‐chief clause. With over 10,000 citations (Code of Federal Regulations) and 145 Curtiss‐Wright references by attorney generals and the Department of Justice justifying presidential prerogatives, the imperial president is enshrined in law. Even with recent challenges, the Court remains steadfast to unilateral executive decision making. However, few studies identify when the executive branch first adopts the Court's newly constituted constitutional order, and few provide a systematic analysis of how presidents advance the sole‐organ doctrine. Building on this scholarship I show that President Truman's cohesive narrative of asserted unilateral powers redirects development for future executives to claim unfettered discretion.

The conventional sense of presidential power remains anchored in Neustadt's notion of persuasion in a fragmented constitutional system. Here, the authors add to an emerging literature that redirects attention to formal sources of presidential authority. They examine the frequency of executive orders from 1949 to 1999 and offer new evidence that presidents rely on executive orders to effect significant policy change and send strategic signals to other actors in the political system. They contend that executive orders enable presidents to recast the organization and activities of the federal government and, at times, the larger contours of American politics. After assessing the political and temporal logic behind this manifestation of institutional power, the authors conclude with several observations about the implications of the findings for the study of the American presidency.