Download or read book The Powers of the U S Congress written by Brien Hallett and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-10-03 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a unique resource for students, scholars, and citizens, this work fully explains all of the 21 enumerated powers of the U.S. Congress, from the "power of the purse" to the power to declare war. This work presents a comprehensive overview of the 21 congressional powers enumerated in the Constitution of the United States through essays that focus on each power. These informative essays introduce and explain each power individually, address its evolution from 1789 to the modern day and into the foreseeable future, and provide real-world examples of how each power has been applied through U.S. history. The comprehensive content enables an understanding of the mutually supporting interplay of all of the legislative powers in our government's system of checks and balances, and it allows readers to better appreciate how radical and daring the framers were at the Philadelphia convention in 1787. Readers will learn about Congressional powers that greatly impact modern citizens, many of which are frequently mentioned in news media due to policy struggles over budget, immigration, and national security; debates regarding the ideal size and role of government; and many others. The contributors also address questions regarding the responsibilities of the Congress, the ways in which Congress has met or failed to meet these responsibilities over the past two centuries, and what changes to congressional power may come in the future.
Download or read book Congress s Constitution written by Joshua Aaron Chafetz and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- PART ONE: SEPARATION-OF-POWERS MULTIPLICITY -- Prelude -- 1 Political Institutions in the Public Sphere -- 2 The Role of Congress -- PART TWO: CONGRESSIONAL HARD POWERS -- 3 The Power of the Purse -- 4 The Personnel Power -- 5 Contempt of Congress -- PART THREE: CONGRESSIONAL SOFT POWERS -- 6 The Freedom of Speech or Debate -- 7 Internal Discipline -- 8 Cameral Rules -- Conclusion: Toward a Normative Evaluation -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z
Download or read book The Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2018-08-20 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States.
Download or read book Powers of Congress written by Congressional Quarterly, inc and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains the constitutional origins, evolution, and current status of congressional powers in areas including fiscal policy, commerce, foreign affairs, and confirmation of nominations. Bibliography.
Download or read book Congressional Record written by United States. Congress and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 1462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)
Download or read book Congress s Constitution written by Josh Chafetz and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading scholar of Congress and the Constitution analyzes Congress’s surprisingly potent set of tools in the system of checks and balances. Congress is widely supposed to be the least effective branch of the federal government. But as Josh Chafetz shows in this boldly original analysis, Congress in fact has numerous powerful tools at its disposal in its conflicts with the other branches. These tools include the power of the purse, the contempt power, freedom of speech and debate, and more. Drawing extensively on the historical development of Anglo-American legislatures from the seventeenth century to the present, Chafetz concludes that these tools are all means by which Congress and its members battle for public support. When Congress uses them to engage successfully with the public, it increases its power vis-à-vis the other branches; when it does not, it loses power. This groundbreaking take on the separation of powers will be of interest to both legal scholars and political scientists.
Download or read book While Dangers Gather written by William G. Howell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly five hundred times in the past century, American presidents have deployed the nation's military abroad, on missions ranging from embassy evacuations to full-scale wars. The question of whether Congress has effectively limited the president's power to do so has generally met with a resounding "no." In While Dangers Gather, William Howell and Jon Pevehouse reach a very different conclusion. The authors--one an American politics scholar, the other an international relations scholar--provide the most comprehensive and compelling evidence to date on Congress's influence on presidential war powers. Their findings have profound implications for contemporary debates about war, presidential power, and Congress's constitutional obligations. While devoting special attention to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, this book systematically analyzes the last half-century of U.S. military policy. Among its conclusions: Presidents are systematically less likely to exercise military force when their partisan opponents retain control of Congress. The partisan composition of Congress, however, matters most for proposed deployments that are larger in size and directed at less strategically important locales. Moreover, congressional influence is often achieved not through bold legislative action but through public posturing--engaging the media, raising public concerns, and stirring domestic and international doubt about the United States' resolve to see a fight through to the end.
Download or read book The Politics of War Powers written by Sarah Burns and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Constitution of the United States divides war powers between the executive and legislative branches to guard against ill-advised or unnecessary military action. This division of powers compels both branches to hold each other accountable and work in tandem. And yet, since the Cold War, congressional ambition has waned on this front. Even when Congress does provide initial authorization for larger operations, they do not provide strict parameters or clear end dates. As a result, one president after another has initiated and carried out poorly developed and poorly executed military policy. The Politics of War Powers offers a measured, deeply informed look at how the American constitutional system broke down, how it impacts decision-making today, and how we might find our way out of this unhealthy power division. Sarah Burns starts with a nuanced account of the theoretical and historical development of war powers in the United States. Where discussions of presidential power often lean on the concept of the Lockean Prerogative, Burns locates a more constructive source in Montesquieu. Unlike Locke, Montesquieu combines universal normative prescriptions with an emphasis on tailoring the structure to the unique needs of a society. In doing so, the separation of powers can be customized while maintaining the moderation needed to create a healthy institutional balance. He demonstrates the importance of forcing the branches into dialogue, putting them, as he says, “in a position to resist” each other. Burns’s conclusion—after tracing changes through Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration, the Cold War, and the War on Terror—is that presidents now command a dangerous degree of unilateral power. Burns’s work ranges across Montesquieu’s theory, the debate over the creation of the Constitution, historical precedent, and the current crisis. Through her analysis, both a fuller picture of the alterations to the constitutional system and ideas on how to address the resulting imbalance of power emerge.
Download or read book Congressional Powers written by Marcus E. Rasmussen and published by . This book was released on 2020-04-04 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Congress''s contempt power is the means by which Congress responds to certain acts that in its view obstruct the legislative process. Chapter 1 examines the source of the contempt power, reviews the historical development of the early case law, outlines the statutory and common law basis for Congress''s contempt power, and analyses the procedures associated with inherent contempt, criminal contempt, and the civil enforcement of subpoenas. It also includes a detailed discussion of two recent information access disputes that led to the approval of contempt citations in the House against then-White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder. Congress gathers much of the information necessary to oversee the implementation of existing laws or to evaluate whether new laws are necessary from the executive branch. While executive branch officials comply with most congressional requests for information, there are times when the executive branch chooses to resist disclosure. When Congress finds an inquiry blocked by the withholding of information by the executive branch, or where the traditional process of negotiation and accommodation is inappropriate or unavailing, a subpoena -- either for testimony or documents -- may be used to compel compliance with congressional demands as reported in chapter2. As reported in chapter 3, the Committee on the Judiciary (''''the Committee'''') is currently engaged in an investigation into alleged obstruction of justice, public corruption, and other abuses of power by President Donald Trump, his associates, and members of his Administration. Few provisions in the U.S. Constitution grant the President an authority as free from legislative constraint as the Pardon Clause. While the pardon power has been wielded in numerous instances throughout American history, there is limited case law interpreting it. This lack of judicial guidance has begot various unsettled legal questions concerning the pardon power''s scope and breadth. For instance, whether the President may issue a self-pardon has been the subject of conflicting views and debate as discussed in chapter 4. Chapter 5 examines the broad constitutional authority of Congress to establish and shape the federal bureaucracy. Congress may use its Article I law-making powers to create federal agencies and individual offices within those agencies, design agencies'' basic structures and operations, and prescribe, subject to certain constitutional limitations, how those holding agency offices are appointed and removed. Congress also may enumerate the powers, duties, and functions to be exercised by agencies, as well as directly counteract, through later legislation, certain agency actions implementing delegated authority. The Trump Administration has recently questioned the legal validity of numerous investigative demands made by House committees. These objections have been based on various grounds, but two specific arguments will be addressed in chapter 6. First, the President and other Administration officials have contended that certain committee demands lack a valid "legislative purpose" and therefore do not fall within Congress''s investigative authority. Second, the President has made a more generalized claim that his advisers cannot be made to testify before Congress, even in the face of a committee subpoena. House Democrats have introduced a resolution that, if approved by the House, would formally "censure and condemn" President Trump for disparaging comments on immigration issues he allegedly made during a meeting with Members of Congress. Chapter 7 will discuss examples of congressional censure of the President before addressing its constitutional validity. Under the U.S. Constitution, the House of Representatives has the power to formally charge a federal officer with wrongdoing, a process known as impeachment. The House impeachment process generally proceeds in three phases: (1) initiation of the impeachment process; (2) Judiciary Committee investigation, hearings, and mark-up of articles of impeachment; and (3) full House consideration of the articles of impeachment. Chapter 8 provides an overview of the procedures and should not be treated or cited as an authority on congressional proceedings.
Download or read book Powers of Congress written by and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book How Our Laws are Made written by John V. Sullivan and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book War Powers written by Peter Irons and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-05-02 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a fundamental question in the development of the American empire: What constraints does the Constitution place on our territorial expansion, military intervention, occupation of foreign countries, and on the power the president may exercise over American foreign policy? Worried about the dangers of unchecked executive power, the Founding Fathers deliberately assigned Congress the sole authority to make war. But the last time Congress declared war was on December 8, 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Since then, every president from Harry Truman to George W. Bush has used military force in pursuit of imperial objectives, while Congress and the Supreme Court have virtually abdicated their responsibilities to check presidential power. Legal historian Irons recounts this story of subversion from above, tracing presidents' increasing willingness to ignore congressional authority and even suspend civil liberties.--From publisher description.
Download or read book War Powers written by Mariah Zeisberg and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-21 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armed interventions in Libya, Haiti, Iraq, Vietnam, and Korea challenged the US president and Congress with a core question of constitutional interpretation: does the president, or Congress, have constitutional authority to take the country to war? War Powers argues that the Constitution doesn't offer a single legal answer to that question. But its structure and values indicate a vision of a well-functioning constitutional politics, one that enables the branches of government themselves to generate good answers to this question for the circumstances of their own times. Mariah Zeisberg shows that what matters is not that the branches enact the same constitutional settlement for all conditions, but instead how well they bring their distinctive governing capacities to bear on their interpretive work in context. Because the branches legitimately approach constitutional questions in different ways, interpretive conflicts between them can sometimes indicate a successful rather than deficient interpretive politics. Zeisberg argues for a set of distinctive constitutional standards for evaluating the branches and their relationship to one another, and she demonstrates how observers and officials can use those standards to evaluate the branches' constitutional politics. With cases ranging from the Mexican War and World War II to the Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis, and Iran-Contra scandal, War Powers reinterprets central controversies of war powers scholarship and advances a new way of evaluating the constitutional behavior of officials outside of the judiciary.
Download or read book War Powers Under the Constitution of the United States written by William Whiting and published by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.. This book was released on 2002 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whiting, William. War Powers under the Constitution of the United States. Military Arrests, Reconstruction & Military Government. Also, Now First Published, War Claims of Aliens with Notes on the Acts of the Executives & Legislative Departments During Our Civil War & a Collection of Cases Decided in the National Courts. 1864. Tenth edition. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1864. xvii, 342 pp. Reprinted 2002 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 99-049360. ISBN 1-58477-055-4. Cloth. $80. * Whiting's writings are widely believed to have profoundly affected President Lincoln's war actions. In Whiting's legal theories regarding war powers and the abolition of slavery espoused here Lincoln found justification for the Emancipation Proclamation, and the constitutional authority to abolish slavery. Simply stated, Whiting held that the abolition of slavery is constitutionally appropriate when viewed not as the objective end of the war, but as a means to end the rebellion in order to save the republic. His writing style was geared to the average reader, and this popular style, along with the tremendous influence of his writings led to the work going through 43 editions in less than a decade. This, the tenth edition is based on his earlier work, The War Powers of the President and the Legislative Powers of Congress, in Relation to Rebellion, Treason and Slavery (1862) which is thought to have been the work that originally brought Whiting to Lincoln's attention and led to his appointment as Solicitor of the War Department. This edition includes various unpublished sensitive documents that he handled in the course of that position.
Download or read book Separation of Powers written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Separation of Powers and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Federalism Based Limitations on Congressional Power written by Congressional Service and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-10-10 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Constitution establishes a system of dual sovereignty between the states and the federal government, with each state having its own government, endowed with all the functions essential to separate and independent existence. Although the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution designates "the Laws of the United States" as "the supreme Law of the Land," other provisions of the Constitution-as well as legal principles undergirding those provisions-nonetheless prohibit the national government from enacting certain types of laws that impinge upon state sovereignty. The various principles that delineate the proper boundaries between the powers of the federal and state governments are collectively known as "federalism." Federalism-based restrictions that the Constitution imposes on the national government's ability to enact legislation may inform Congress's work in any number of areas of law in which the states and the federal government dually operate. There are two central ways in which the Constitution imposes federalism-based limitations on Congress's powers. First, Congress's powers are restricted by and to the terms of express grants of power in the Constitution, which thereby establish internal constraints on the federal government's authority. The Constitution explicitly grants Congress a limited set of carefully defined enumerated powers, while reserving most other legislative powers to the states. As a result, Congress may not enact any legislation that exceeds the scope of its limited enumerated powers. That said, Congress's enumerated powers nevertheless do authorize the federal government to enact legislation that may significantly influence the scope of power exercised by the states. For instance, subject to certain restrictions, Congress may utilize its taxing and spending powers to encourage states to undertake certain types of actions that Congress might otherwise lack the constitutional authority to undertake on its own. Similarly, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution's Commerce Clause to afford Congress substantial (but not unlimited) authority to regulate certain purely intrastate economic activities that substantially affect interstate commerce in the aggregate. Congress may also enact certain types of legislation in order to implement international treaties. Additionally, pursuant to a collection of constitutional amendments ratified shortly after the Civil War, Congress may directly regulate the states in limited respects in order to prevent states from depriving persons of certain procedural and substantive rights. Finally, the Necessary and Proper Clause augments Congress's enumerated powers by empowering the federal government to enact laws that are "necessary and proper" to execute its express powers. In addition to the internal constraints on Congress's authority, the Constitution also imposes external limitations on Congress's powers vis-à-vis the states-that is, affirmative prohibitions on certain types of federal actions found elsewhere in the text or structure of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has recognized, for instance, that the national government may not commandeer the states' authority for its own purposes by forcing a state's legislature or executive to implement federal commands. Nor may Congress apply undue pressure to coerce states into taking actions they are otherwise disinclined to take. Furthermore, the principle of state sovereign immunity-which limits the circumstances in which a state may be forced to defend itself against a lawsuit against its will-imposes significant constraints on Congress's ability to subject states to suit. Finally, the Supreme Court has recognized limits to the extent to which Congress may subject some states to more onerous regulatory burdens than other states.
Download or read book Power Shifts written by John A. Dearborn and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-09-10 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The extraordinary nature of the Trump presidency has spawned a resurgence in the study of the presidency and a rising concern about the power of the office. In Power Shifts: Congress and Presidential Representation, John Dearborn explores the development of the idea of the representative presidency, that the president alone is elected by a national constituency, and thus the only part of government who can represent the nation against the parochial concerns of members of Congress, and its relationship to the growth of presidential power in the 20th century. Dearborn asks why Congress conceded so much power to the Chief Executive, with the support of particularly conservative members of the Supreme Court. He discusses the debates between Congress and the Executive and the arguments offered by politicians, scholars, and members of the judiciary about the role of the president in the American state. He asks why so many bought into the idea of the representative, and hence, strong presidency despite unpopular wars, failed foreign policies, and parochial actions that favor only the president's supporters. This is a book about the power of ideas in the development of the American state"--
