scholarly journals Executive Opportunism, Presidential Signing Statements, and the Separation of Powers

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel B. Rodriguez ◽  
Edward H. Stiglitz ◽  
Barry R. Weingast

8 Journal of Legal Analysis 95-119 (2016)Executive discretion over policy outcomes is an inevitable feature of our political system. However, in recent years, the President has sought to expand his discretion through a variety of controversial and legally questionable tactics. Through a series of simple separation of powers models, we study one such tactic, employed by both Democratic and Republican presidents: the use of signing statements, which purport to have status in the interpretation of statutory meaning. Our models also show that signing statements upset the constitutional vision of lawmaking and, in a wide range of cases, exacerbate legislative gridlock. We argue that courts should not legally credit signing statements; we conclude by discussing executive opportunism broadly.

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (10) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Emad Wakaa Ajil

Iraq is one of the most Arab countries where the system of government has undergone major political transformations and violent events since the emergence of the modern Iraqi state in 1921 and up to the present. It began with the monarchy and the transformation of the regime into the republican system in 1958. In the republican system, Continued until 2003, and after the US occupation of Iraq in 2003, the regime changed from presidential to parliamentary system, and the parliamentary experience is a modern experience for Iraq, as he lived for a long time without parliamentary experience, what existed before 2003, can not be a parliamentary experience , The experience righteousness The study of the parliamentary system in particular and the political process in general has not been easy, because it is a complex and complex process that concerns the political system and its internal and external environment, both of which are influential in the political system and thus on the political process as a whole, After the US occupation of Iraq, the United States intervened to establish a permanent constitution for the country. Despite all the circumstances accompanying the drafting of the constitution, it is the first constitution to be drafted by an elected Constituent Assembly. The Iraqi Constitution adopted the parliamentary system of government and approved the principle of flexible separation of powers in order to achieve cooperation and balance between the authorities.


2002 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Ballmann ◽  
David Epstein ◽  
Sharyn O'Halloran

Although relatively unknown outside of Europe, comitology committees are an object of considerable controversy in the European Union (EU). Controversy stems from their pivotal role in overseeing policy implementation authority delegated from the Council of Ministers (Council) to the European Commission (Commission). In this article, we employ a game-theoretic model to analyze the influence of these, committees on policy outcomes. Our analysis provides three important insights. First, we show that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, comitology committees move outcomes toward the Commission's preferred policies rather than the Council's. Second, we demonstrate that the possibility of a Council veto may also move outcomes away from Council members' policy preferences and toward the Commission's. Third, the 1999 changes to the comitology procedures, designed to enhance the Commission's autonomy in policymaking, may have had the exact opposite effect. Paradoxically, we conclude that comitology serves to enhance the Commission's role in policy implementation and thereby strengthens the separation of powers within the EU.


Author(s):  
Vladislav Topilin ◽  
Roman Fedorov

The article is devoted to the problems of the legal status of the prosecutor’s office in the system of separation of powers. In the study, the author uses grammatical (philological, linguistic) logical, systematic and other methods of scientific knowledge. The author proposes to separate the prosecutor’s office into a separate (supervisory) branch of government, which will not belong to either the executive branch or the judicial branch, as a result of which the state will receive an independent state structure that will be able to exercise its supervisory functions independently of anyone, which will allow for better and faster suppression of possible violations by any branch of government, as well as improve the work of the state apparatus as a whole.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter M. Shane

The George W. Bush administration's use of signing statements embodied a disturbingly thin and formalist view of the rule of law that goes hand-in-hand with its vision of the separation of powers. Its signing statement practice was notable both for the extremity of the constitutional vision that these statements typically asserted—especially with regard to the so-called "unitary executive”—and with regard to their sheer volume, unmatched in the entire history of the executive. To understand the latter phenomenon, the Bush signing statements need to be understood not just as an expression of a constitutional philosophy, but also as an effort to institutionalize through faux law a highly presidential ethos as a fundamental element of the spirit with which the government conducts business.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (58) ◽  
pp. 9-24
Author(s):  
Dariusz Skrzypiński

The article provides an analysis of PiS1. actions with respect to the judiciary. PiS is the ruling party in Poland since 2015. It implemented very deep institutional reforms and took intensive communication measures of propaganda-like discrediting nature which brought significant political consequences. Firstly, the principles of rule of law and separation of powers were breached leading to a departure from standards of liberal democracy. Secondly, very strong polarisation of attitudes occurred in the society and legal elites with respect to the introduced reforms, causing politicisation of the judiciary and confrontation inside the judiciary between those in favour and those against the government’s actions.


Author(s):  
Michael A. Bailey ◽  
Forrest Maltzman

Justices have considerable latitude to pursue either their personal preferences or their personal visions of the law. The danger is that the Court gets so far out of line from the rest of the political system that we see fundamental institutional showdowns that threaten the independence of the judiciary, such as the Court-packing controversy in the 1930s. If the elected branches influence justices, however, they can keep the Court in check, thereby attenuating such risks. This chapter tests whether the Court systematically yields to the elected branches. In particular, it examines whether individual justices vote differently when the constraints imposed by the executive and legislative branches are likely to be at their strongest. It focuses on the two versions in the literature: one in which the Court is constrained only on statutory cases and the other in which the constraint extends to all cases, including constitutional cases.


2021 ◽  
pp. 186-218
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Lacombe

This chapter looks back to the beginning of the National Rifle Association's (NRA) partisan phase in order to explore the effects of this position on the group's ability to influence gun policy outcomes. The chapter — examining a number of gun policy cases from the 1980s through the 2010s — questions how would NRA's efforts to advance its agenda — and the effectiveness of those efforts — shift in light of its new place in the political system. It also investigates how would the ideational resources it had used in previous gun control battles come into play. Ultimately, the chapter displays how NRA's relationship with the GOP has opened up new avenues, including influence over both the contents and timing of the legislative agenda.


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