Bench Memos

The (Inevitable) Assertion of Executive Power

The Washington Post reports this morning that President Obama’s advisers “are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely.”

Yesterday The Hill (h/t John McCormack at TWS) reported that the president attached a signing statement worthy of George W. Bush to a war-funding bill–complete with constitutional objections to some of the legislation’s provisions.

The world sure looks different after you take that oath of office, doesn’t it?  How easily campaign declarations of outrage are forgotten!  I bet there’s not a president since Truman who hasn’t learned to loathe the Supreme Court’s decision in the Steel Seizure Case.

Matthew J. Franck is retired from Princeton University, where he was a lecturer in Politics and associate director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He is also a senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institute, a contributing editor of Public Discourse, and professor emeritus of political science at Radford University.
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