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presidential power

  • 10/24/2021

    Four Myths of Presidential Power

    by Daniel Farber

    History looms large in arguments about the Constitution these days. But there are widespread misunderstandings of what history tells us about presidential powers, from making war to being impeached. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    10/20/2020

    Watergate Led to Reforms. Now, Would-Be Reformers Believe, So Will Trump

    Jack Goldmith and Robert Bauer, legal veterans of the George W. Bush and Obama administrations respectively, are proposing a slate of reforms to limit executive branch powers. They hope to match the legislation passed after Watergate and the revelations of intelligence community abuses exposed by the Church Committee.

  • SOURCE: NYT
    3-22-13

    Mary L. Dudziak: Obama’s Nixonian Precedent

    Mary L. Dudziak, a professor of law and director of the Project on War and Security in Law, Culture and Society at Emory University, is the author of “War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences.”ON March 17, 1969, President Richard M. Nixon began a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia, sending B-52 bombers over the border from South Vietnam. This episode, largely buried in history, resurfaced recently in an unexpected place: the Obama administration’s “white paper” justifying targeted killings of Americans suspected of involvement in terrorism.President Obama is reportedly considering moving control of the drone program from the Central Intelligence Agency to the Defense Department, as questions about the program’s legality continue to be asked. But this shift would do nothing to confer legitimacy to the drone strikes. The legitimacy problem comes from the secrecy itself — not which entity secretly does the killing. Secrecy has been used to hide presidential overreach — as the Cambodia example shows.