Where Does the President Get the Power to Execute Federal Laws

The Take Care clause is at the heart of several ongoing disputes. First, consider restrictions on the dismissal of officers. In a number of unfortunate cases, the Supreme Court has approved the creation of independent authorities that would act as the government`s fourth estate. These agencies enforce various federal laws (communications, banking, securities) in investigating and prosecuting alleged violations. Congress has protected these agencies from the executive branch by imposing restrictions on the removal of their senior officials “for cause.” It is hard to escape the conclusion that such laws are unconstitutional. They violate the granting of executive power and interfere with the duty of care. By creating mini-fiefdoms, Congress essentially stripped the president of the executive branch and granted it to these agencies. In addition, Congress has erected legal hurdles that make it quite difficult for the president to judge whether the law is being executed conscientiously. Finally, the momentum of contemporary federal law means that federal law enforcement agencies have enormous discretion in law enforcement.

In particular, resource constraints combined with numerous infringements often prevent a full implementation policy. Given the inevitable trade-offs, modern presidents weigh the costs and benefits of investigations, arrests, and prosecutions, and sometimes create rules to allocate limited resources across the range of possible investigations and prosecutions. In this context, the assessment of what constitutes faithful execution is fraught with value judgments about the relative merits of some implementation priorities over others. Moreover, contentious disputes over discretion invariably revolve around allegations that the President breached his duty of faithful execution by failing to adopt a particular law enforcement policy or strategy. Section 3 of Article II has not played a significant role in expanding the power of the President (although, as will be discussed below, it must be interpreted in the light of this expansion). On the contrary, the extent of the President`s power was determined more by the actual exercise of executive power than by the constitutional text. As Justice Jackson wrote more than 50 years ago in Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer (1952): “The Constitution does not reveal the extent of the actual controls exercised by the modern presidential office. Huge gains in federal power. have expanded the scope of the president`s activities, so that] the centers of real power.

do not appear on the face of the Constitution. The president has several options when a bill is submitted to him by Congress. If the President agrees with the law, he may sign it within ten days of receiving it. If the president opposes the bill, he can veto the bill and send the bill back to Congress with a veto message proposing amendments, unless Congress is not in session, then the president can rely on a pocket veto. Second, there are persistent disagreements over whether the president should obey, defend, and enforce laws he deems unconstitutional. Speakers sometimes say that because they consider parts of a law unconstitutional, they will ignore those provisions. Some scholars have argued that the Take Care Clause prohibits the president from refusing to honor, defend, and enforce federal laws. Once a law becomes law, the president must enforce it.

A contrary (and better) view assumes that unconstitutional laws are void from the outset and are therefore not subject to the clause. Although the Supreme Court has never ruled that the president can refuse to enforce unconstitutional laws, many justices have emphasized this authority. Moreover, the practice dates back to Thomas Jefferson when he refused to prosecute individuals for violating a law he deemed unconstitutional. Jefferson said the alleged law (the infamous Sedition Act) is not a law at all and is therefore not subject to due diligence. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent Gulf War in 1991 saw George H. W. Bush come together and lead one of the largest military coalitions of nations in modern times. Faced with a major constitutional issue of opaque legislation that left the wars in Korea and Vietnam without official declarations of war, Congress quickly authorized extensive war powers for Bush. [25] George W. Bush`s leadership during the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq has had mixed results.

After the al-Qaeda attacks on the 11th. In September, the ensuing war on terror and the 2003 invasion of Iraq for Iraq`s alleged support for terrorism and the possession of weapons of mass destruction, the speed with which the Taliban and Baath Party governments in Kabul and Baghdad were toppled by the overwhelming superiority of US and allied forces defied the predictions of many military experts.