Limiting the power of the President


Everyday it seems we read about the continuing flaunting of traditional constitutional limits on the power of the US president. Robert Freeman has a good historical essay on the fear of Madison and other Founding Fathers that a monarchy might try to reestablish itself in America after the revolution and the extraordinary steps they took to try to ensure that it didn't. John Nichols in the Nation discusses the abdication of the Senate Judicial Committee in its duty to assert Congressional oversight over an ambitious president. A clique of legal advisors around the president is pushing hard for the theory of the unitary power of the executive - what in previous times (the 1960s) might have been termed the "imperial presidency" or in the 18th century just a plain old "monarchy". What happens when these advocates of the "unitary" presidential powers get appointed to the Supreme Court? Time for a replay of 1776... but where is our Madison, our Jefferson...

Everyday it seems we read about the continuing flaunting of traditional constitutional limits on the power of the US president. Robert Freeman has a good historical essay on the fear of Madison and other Founding Fathers that a monarchy might try to reestablish itself in America after the revolution and the extraordinary steps they took to try to ensure that it didn't. John Nichols in the Nation discusses the abdication of the Senate Judicial Committee in its duty to assert Congressional oversight over an ambitious president. A clique of legal advisors around the president is pushing hard for the theory of the unitary power of the executive - what in previous times (the 1960s) might have been termed the "imperial presidency" or in the 18th century just a plain old "monarchy". What happens when these advocates of the "unitary" presidential powers get appointed to the Supreme Court? Time for a replay of 1776... but where is our Madison, our Jefferson...

Posted: Sun - January 29, 2006 at 04:56 PM        

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