Download or read book Presidential Power written by Matthew A. Crenson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how American presidents--especially those of the past three decades--have increased the power of the presidency at the expense of democracy.

Download or read book The Living Presidency written by Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A constitutional originalist sounds the alarm over the presidency’s ever-expanding powers, ascribing them unexpectedly to the liberal embrace of a living Constitution. Liberal scholars and politicians routinely denounce the imperial presidency—a self-aggrandizing executive that has progressively sidelined Congress. Yet the same people invariably extol the virtues of a living Constitution, whose meaning adapts with the times. Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash argues that these stances are fundamentally incompatible. A constitution prone to informal amendment systematically favors the executive and ensures that there are no enduring constraints on executive power. In this careful study, Prakash contends that an originalist interpretation of the Constitution can rein in the “living presidency” legitimated by the living Constitution. No one who reads the Constitution would conclude that presidents may declare war, legislate by fiat, and make treaties without the Senate. Yet presidents do all these things. They get away with it, Prakash argues, because Congress, the courts, and the public routinely excuse these violations. With the passage of time, these transgressions are treated as informal constitutional amendments. The result is an executive increasingly liberated from the Constitution. The solution is originalism. Though often associated with conservative goals, originalism in Prakash’s argument should appeal to Republicans and Democrats alike, as almost all Americans decry the presidency’s stunning expansion. The Living Presidency proposes a baker’s dozen of reforms, all of which could be enacted if only Congress asserted its lawful authority.

Download or read book Unchecked and Unbalanced written by Arnold S. Kling and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Unchecked and Unbalanced, Arnold Kling provides a blueprint for those who are skeptical of political and financial elitism. At the heart of Kling's argument is the growing discrepancy between two phenomena: knowledge is becoming more diffuse, while political power is becoming more concentrated. Kling sees this knowledge/power discrepancy at the heart of the financial crisis of 2008. Financial industry executives and regulatory officials lacked the ability to fathom the complexity of the system that had emerged. And, in response, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, said that they required still more power, including $700 billion to purchase "toxic assets" from banks. Kling warns that increased concentration of power is a problem, not a panacea, for our modern world and suggests reforms designed to curb the growth of government and allow citizens greater control over the allocation of public goods. Published in cooperation with the Hoover Institution

Download or read book Unchecked Corporate Power written by Gregg Barak and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-02-03 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an exposé of the globalized, corporate, financial and state crimes of powerful organizations, drawing on a range of current cases from the recent epidemic of Wall Street securities frauds to the torturing of prisoners by the US.

Download or read book Unchecked And Unbalanced written by Schwarz O. and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty years after the Church Committee unearthed COINTELPRO and other instances of illicit executive behavior on the domestic and international fronts, the Bush administration has elevated the flaws identified by the committee into first principles of government. Through a constellation of non-public laws and opaque, unaccountable institutions, the current administration has created a “secret presidency” run by classified presidential decisions and orders about national security. A hyperactive Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice is intent on eliminating checks on presidential power and testing that power's limits. Decisions are routinely executed at senior levels within the civilian administration without input from Congress or the federal courts, let alone our international allies. Secret NSA spying at home is the most recent of these. Harsh treatment of detainees, “extraordinary renditions,” secret foreign prisons, and the newly minted enemy combatant designation have also undermined our values. The resulting policies have harmed counterterrorism efforts and produced few tangible results. With a partisan Congress predictably reluctant to censure a politically aligned president, it is all the more important for citizens themselves to demand disclosure, oversight, and restraint of sweeping claims of executive power. This book is the first step.

Download or read book Unchecked Power written by Alison L. Young and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2023-11-28 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is the government really acting for the people? Or does this rhetoric simply justify an executive power-grab? For some, Boris Johnson's premiership epitomised how far the UK's democracy has been captured by populism and the Prime Minister seemed more concerned about fulfilling the wishes of the British people than with following the rules or listening to Parliament. Events like 'Partygate' grabbed the headlines. Criticisms of Boris Johnson's actions eventually led to his resignation and replacement as leader of his party and Prime Minister. Some feel that this shows that the UK's constitution is healthy, with checks and balances in place to prevent any possible abuse of power. While these events attracted much media attention, other constitutional changes have been taking place with little public awareness. These have strengthened governmental powers and weakened political and legal checks over governmental actions. Deliberation is being replaced by rhetoric and principles of good government no longer seem to restrain the actions of those in power. Alison Young provides the first consolidated account of these changes, arguing that the UK is currently on a constitutional cliff-edge which endangers democracy and good constitutional government. She argues that more is needed to shore up the UK's post-Brexit constitution to prevent it collapsing into a system of unchecked power.

Download or read book Unchecked written by Rachael Bade and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revealing, behind-the-scenes examination of how Congress twice fumbled its best chance to hold accountable a president many considered one of the most dangerous in American history. The definitive—and only—insider account of both Trump impeachments, as told by the two reporters on the front lines covering them for The Washington Post and Politico. In a riveting account that flips the script on what readers think they know about the two impeachments of Donald Trump, Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian reveal how—and why—congressional oversight failed when it was needed most. Unchecked weaves a vivid narrative of how House Democrats under the lead of a cautious speaker, Nancy Pelosi, hesitated for months to stand up to Trump—and then pulled punches in their effort to oust him in a misguided effort to protect themselves politically. What they left on the cutting room floor would come back to haunt them, as Republicans seized on their missteps to whip an uneasy GOP rank-and-file into line behind Donald Trump, abandoning their scruples to defend a president who some privately believed had indeed abused his power. Even after Trump incited a mob to violently attack the Capitol—a day the authors recount in minute-by-minute, stunning detail — Democrats pressured their own investigators to forego a thorough investigation in the name of safeguarding the Biden agenda. And Republicans, fearful of repelling a base they needed for re-election, missed their best moment to turn their backs on a leader they secretly agreed was destructive to democracy. Sourced from hundreds of interviews with all the key players, the authors of Unchecked pull back the curtain on how both parties pursued political expediency over fact-finding. The end result not only emboldened Trump, giving him room for a political comeback, but also undermined Congress by rendering toothless their most powerful check on a president: the power of impeachment. A dramatic and at times crushing work of investigative reporting, Unchecked is both a gripping page-turner of political intrigue and a detailed case study for historians and political scientists searching for answers about the unravelling of checks and balances that have governed American democracy for centuries.

Download or read book Power and Constraint The Accountable Presidency After 9 11 written by Jack Goldsmith and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-03-12 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The surprising truth behind Barack Obama's decision to continue many of his predecessor's counterterrorism policies. Conventional wisdom holds that 9/11 sounded the death knell for presidential accountability. In fact, the opposite is true. The novel powers that our post-9/11 commanders in chief assumed—endless detentions, military commissions, state secrets, broad surveillance, and more—are the culmination of a two-century expansion of presidential authority. But these new powers have been met with thousands of barely visible legal and political constraints—enforced by congressional committees, government lawyers, courts, and the media—that have transformed our unprecedentedly powerful presidency into one that is also unprecedentedly accountable. These constraints are the key to understanding why Obama continued the Bush counterterrorism program, and in this light, the events of the last decade should be seen as a victory, not a failure, of American constitutional government. We have actually preserved the framers’ original idea of a balanced constitution, despite the vast increase in presidential power made necessary by this age of permanent emergency.

Download or read book In the Name of National Security written by Louis Fisher and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In light of the Bush administration's continued use of Reynolds to justify its post-9/11 claims to unilateral authority, Fisher's work could not be more timely."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Iran Contra written by Malcolm Byrne and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-09-11 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everything began to unravel on October 5, 1986, when a Nicaraguan soldier downed an American plane carrying arms to “Contra” guerrillas, exposing a tightly held U.S. clandestine program. A month later, reports surfaced that Washington had been covertly selling arms to Iran (our sworn enemy and a state sponsor of terrorism), in exchange for help freeing hostages in Beirut. The profits, it turned out, were going to support the Contras, despite an explicit ban by Congress. In the firestorm that erupted, shocking details emerged, raising the prospect of impeachment, and the American public confronted a scandal as momentous as it was confusing. At its center was President Ronald Reagan amid a swirl of questions about illegal wars, consorting with terrorists, and the abuse of presidential power. Yet, despite the enormity of the issues, the affair dropped from the public radar due to media overkill, years of legal wrangling, and a vigorous campaign to forestall another Watergate. As a result, many Americans failed to grasp the scandal’s full import. Through exhaustive use of declassified documents, previously unavailable investigative materials, and wide-ranging interviews, Malcolm Byrne revisits this largely forgotten and misrepresented episode. Placing the events in their historical and political context (notably the Cold War and a sharp partisan domestic divide), he explores what made the affair possible and meticulously relates how it unfolded—including clarifying minor myths about cakes, keys, bibles, diversion memos, and shredding parties. Iran-Contra demonstrates that, far from being a “junta” against the president, the affair could not have occurred without awareness and approval at the very top of the U.S. government. Byrne reveals an unmistakable pattern of dubious behavior—including potentially illegal conduct by the president, vice president, the secretaries of state and defense, the CIA director and others—that formed the true core of the scandal. Given the lack of meaningful consequences for those involved, the volume raises critical questions about the ability of our current system of checks and balances to address presidential abuses of power, and about the possibility of similar outbreaks in the future.

Download or read book Liberty s Nemesis written by Dean Reuter and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 579 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If there has been a unifying theme of Barack Obama’s presidency, it is the inexorable growth of the administrative state. Its expansion has followed a pattern: First, expand federal powers beyond their constitutional limits. Second, delegate those powers to agencies and away from elected politicians in Congress. Third, insulate civil servants from politics and accountability. Since its introduction in American life by Woodrow Wilson in the 20th Century, the administrative state’s has steadily undermined democratic self-government, reduced the sphere of individual liberty, and burdened the free market and economic growth. In Liberty’s Nemesis, Dean Reuter and John Yoo collect the brightest political minds in the country to expose this explosive, unchecked growth of power in government agencies ranging from health care to climate change, financial markets to immigration, and more. Many Americans have rightly shared the Founders’ fear of excessive lawmaking, but Liberty’s Nemesis is the first book to explain why the concentration of power in administrative agencies in particular is the greatest – and most overlooked – threat to our liberties today. If we fail to curb it, our constitutional republic might easily devolve into something akin to the statist governments of Europe. President Obama’s ongoing efforts to encourage just such a devolution, and the problems his administration faces as a consequence, present a critical opportunity to defend the original vision of the Constitution.

Download or read book Imperial from the Beginning written by Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eminent scholar Saikrishna Prakash offers the first truly comprehensive study of the original American presidency. Drawing from a vast range of sources both well known and obscure, this volume reconstructs the powers and duties of the nation's chief executive at the Constitution's founding. Among other subjects, Prakash examines the term and structure of the office of the president, as well as the president's power as constitutional executor of the law, authority in foreign policy, role as commander in chief, level of control during emergencies, and relationship with the Congress, the courts, and the states. This ambitious and even-handed analysis counters numerous misconceptions about the presidency and fairly demonstrates that the office was seen as monarchical from its inception.

Download or read book Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic written by Stephen Skowronek and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful dissection of one of the fundamental problems in American governance today: the clash between presidents determined to redirect the nation through ever-tighter control of administration and an executive branch still organized to promote shared interests in steady hands, due deliberation, and expertise. President Trump pitted himself repeatedly against the institutions and personnel of the executive branch. In the process, two once-obscure concepts came center stage in an eerie faceoff. On one side was the specter of a "Deep State" conspiracyadministrators threatening to thwart the will of the people and undercut the constitutional authority of the president they elected to lead them. On the other side was a raw personalization of presidential power, one that a theory of "the unitary executive" gussied up and allowed to run roughshod over reason and the rule of law. The Deep State and the unitary executive framed every major contest of the Trump presidency. Like phantom twins, they drew each other out. These conflicts are not new. Stephen Skowronek, John A. Dearborn, and Desmond King trace the tensions between presidential power and the depth of the American state back through the decades and forward through the various settlements arrived at in previous eras. Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic is about the breakdown of settlements and the abiding vulnerabilities of a Constitution that gave scant attention to administrative power. Rather than simply dump on Trump, the authors provide a richly historical perspective on the conflicts that rocked his presidency, and they explain why, if left untamed, the phantom twins will continue to pull the American government apart.

Download or read book Power Without Responsibility written by David Schoenbrod and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that Congress's process for making law is as corrosive to the nation as unchecked deficit spending. David Schoenbrod shows that Congress and the president, instead of making the laws that govern us, generally give bureaucrats the power to make laws through agency regulations. Our elected "lawmakers" then take credit for proclaiming popular but inconsistent statutory goals and later blame the inevitable burdens and disappointments on the unelected bureaucrats. The 1970 Clean Air Act, for example, gave the Environmental Protection Agency the impossible task of making law that would satisfy both industry and environmentalists. Delegation allows Congress and the president to wield power by pressuring agency lawmakers in private, but shed responsibility by avoiding the need to personally support or oppose the laws, as they must in enacting laws themselves. Schoenbrod draws on his experience as an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council and on studies of how delegation actually works to show that this practice produces a regulatory system so cumbersome that it cannot provide the protection that people need, so large that it needlessly stifles the economy, and so complex that it keeps the voters from knowing whom to hold accountable for the consequences. Contending that delegation is unnecessary and unconstitutional, Schoenbrod has written the first book that shows how, as a practical matter, delegation can be stopped.

Download or read book Unreasonable written by Devon W. Carbado and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the Supreme Court’s decision to treat unreasonable policing as reasonable under the Fourth Amendment has shortened the distance between life and death for Black people The summer of 2020 will be remembered as an unprecedented, watershed moment in the struggle for racial equality. Published on the second anniversary of the global protests over the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Unreasonable is a groundbreaking investigation of the role that the law—and the U.S. Constitution—play in the epidemic of police violence against Black people. In this crucially timely book, celebrated legal scholar Devon W. Carbado explains how the Fourth Amendment became ground zero for regulating police conduct—more important than Miranda warnings, the right to counsel, equal protection and due process. Fourth Amendment law determines when and how the police can make arrests, and it determines the precarious line between stopping Black people and killing Black people. A leading light in the critical race studies movement, Carbado looks at how that text, in the last four decades, has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to protect police officers, not African Americans; how it sanctions search and seizure as well as profiling; and how it has become, ultimately, an amendment of life and death. Accessible, radical, and essential reading, Unreasonable sheds light on a rarely understood dimension of today’s most pressing issue.

Download or read book Permanent State of Emergency written by Ryan Alford and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2017-06-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States launched initiatives that test the limits of international human rights law. The indefinite detention and torture of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, targeted killing, and mass surveillance require an expansion of executive authority that negates the rule of law. In Permanent State of Emergency, Ryan Alford establishes that the ongoing failure to address human rights abuses is a symptom of the most serious constitutional crisis in American history. Instead of curbing the increase in executive power, Congress and the courts facilitated the breakdown of the nation’s constitutional order and set the stage for presidential supremacy. The presidency, Alford argues, is now more than imperial: it is an elective dictatorship. Providing both an overview and a systematic analysis of the new regime, he objectively demonstrates that it does not meet even the minimum requirements of the rule of law. At this critical juncture in American democracy, Permanent State of Emergency alerts the public to the structural transformation of the state and reiterates the importance of the constitutional limits of the American presidency.

Download or read book Emergency Presidential Power written by Chris Edelson and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can a U.S. president decide to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely without charges or secretly monitor telephone conversations and e-mails without a warrant in the interest of national security? Was the George W. Bush administration justified in authorizing waterboarding? Was President Obama justified in ordering the killing, without trial or hearing, of a U.S. citizen suspected of terrorist activity? Defining the scope and limits of emergency presidential power might seem easy—just turn to Article II of the Constitution. But as Chris Edelson shows, the reality is complicated. In times of crisis, presidents have frequently staked out claims to broad national security power. Ultimately it is up to the Congress, the courts, and the people to decide whether presidents are acting appropriately or have gone too far. Drawing on excerpts from the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court opinions, Department of Justice memos, and other primary documents, Edelson weighs the various arguments that presidents have used to justify the expansive use of executive power in times of crisis. Emergency Presidential Power uses the historical record to evaluate and analyze presidential actions before and after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The choices of the twenty-first century, Edelson concludes, have pushed the boundaries of emergency presidential power in ways that may provide dangerous precedents for current and future commanders-in-chief. Winner, Crader Family Book Prize in American Values, Department of History and Crader Family Endowment for American Values, Southeast Missouri State University