The Pompous Postmaster and Presidential Power: The Story of Myers v. United States

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan L. Entin
Author(s):  
Andrew Rudalevige

The president of the United States is commonly thought to wield extraordinary personal power through the issuance of executive orders. In fact, the vast majority of such orders are proposed by federal agencies and shaped by negotiations that span the executive branch. This book provides the first comprehensive look at how presidential directives are written — and by whom. The book examines more than five hundred executive orders from the 1930s to today — as well as more than two hundred others negotiated but never issued — shedding vital new light on the multilateral process of drafting supposedly unilateral directives. The book draws on a wealth of archival evidence from the Office of Management and Budget and presidential libraries as well as original interviews to show how the crafting of orders requires widespread consultation and compromise with a formidable bureaucracy. It explains the key role of management in the presidential skill set, detailing how bureaucratic resistance can stall and even prevent actions the chief executive desires, and how presidents must bargain with the bureaucracy even when they seek to act unilaterally. Challenging popular conceptions about the scope of presidential power, the book reveals how the executive branch holds the power to both enact and constrain the president's will.


2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 227
Author(s):  
Emily Mross

Debates of presidential powers are often tied to the founding documents of the United States of America and the documents produced by those who have held its highest office. Presidential Power, therefore, is a natural fit for ABC-CLIO’s Documents Decoded series. The introduction does a thorough job of explaining both the nuances of expressed and implied presidential powers as defined (or not) by the Constitution, and how these powers are expanded or constrained by the branches of government using concrete examples from US history.


2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 657-665 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc A Sennewald ◽  
Kenneth L Manning ◽  
Robert A Carp

The polarization of political parties in the United States is a well-documented phenomenon. This paper considers polarization of the judicial branch and relates it to the evolution of the parties. In this paper we define polarization specifically as movement from a modal distribution (of votes, attitudes, or decisions) to a bimodal distribution along a liberal-conservative spectrum over time. Using data compiled from 90,000 United States District Court decisions published in the Federal Supplement between 1934 and 2008, we find that the judiciary began to polarize in the 1960s and has remained polarized. We consider a number of competing explanations for the polarization of the district courts, including a top-down view that emphasizes presidential power and a bottom-up view that focuses on the sorting of elites that form the pool of potential judges.


2006 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 117-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN HUFBAUER

Abstract: This article focuses on the museums in presidential libraries. Since 1940 the rise of the federal presidential library has transformed presidential memorialization by largely allowing presidents—initially, at least—to commemorate themselves. This has populated the landscape of public memory in the United States with a series of history museums that promote an expansive view of presidential power. These museums also attempt to elevate individual presidents into the civil religion of the United States. This article examines the largely celebratory accounts in some presidential libraries, and contrasts them with the Truman Library's more balanced and historically accurate approach.


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