The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic

Eric A. Posner · Adrian Vermeule

Mar 2011 · Oxford University Press

About this ebook

Ever since Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. used "imperial presidency" as a book title, the term has become central to the debate about the balance of power in the U.S. government. Since the presidency of George W. Bush, when advocates of executive power such as Dick Cheney gained ascendancy, the argument has blazed hotter than ever. Many argue the Constitution itself is in grave danger. What is to be done? The answer, according to legal scholars Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule, is nothing. In The Executive Unbound, they provide a bracing challenge to conventional wisdom, arguing that a strong presidency is inevitable in the modern world. Most scholars, they note, object to today's level of executive power because it varies so dramatically from the vision of the framers. But there is nothing in our system of checks and balances that intrinsically generates order or promotes positive arrangements. In fact, the greater complexity of the modern world produces a concentration of power, particularly in the White House. The authors chart the rise of executive authority straight through to the Obama presidency. Political, cultural and social restraints, they argue, have been more effective in preventing dictatorship than any law. The executive-centered state tends to generate political checks that substitute for the legal checks of the Madisonian constitution.

Ratings and reviews

The fact is no society is static, therefore no constitution is subject to static interpretation and implementation. The perpetual evolution of the society and the reality of the day constantly warrants assignment of evolving interpretation and implementation to the constitution. Tweaking or amendment, in some cases, is not enough. Each of the three branches of government has their own specific, unique role to play in the upholding and respecting of the law. But the one that make and judge the law deal with the law more theoretically than the one to whom the administraion is assigned. In this arrangement, inevitably there will be necessity that will demand the administrator to make decision waving the opinion of the general public, which is the majority according to the concept Republic. This, in no sense, diminishes the primary tenets of the constitution, but rather allow for the functioning of the state in a motion that security and welfare will be ensured. To illustriate: If the river from which the fish with which the people are fed is fished dries up, would any rational man come to the conclusion that another means of feeding the people shouldn't be sought just because of the reluctance to dig deeper for water or discover another river which has not yet been discovered but whose discovery is urgent and necessary? The central point of the reasoning doesn't revolve around the constitution, because the constitution is not the bone of contention. The law provides guidance to agreements, irrespective of how and when they are made. Therefore the question is: is the society ecclectic enough to respond accordingly to the demands of the day? Once the state possess this ability, the constitution will provide the prescription of how to guidedly implement those consensual agreement based on the demands of the day

About the author

Eric A. Posner is Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, and is the author of The Perils of Global Legalism, Terror in the Balance (written with Vermeule), and Climate Change Justice, among other books. Adrian Vermeule is John H. Watson Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and is the author of Law and the Limits of Reason, Mechanisms of Democracy, and Judging Under Uncertainty, and is the co-author with Posner of Terror in the Balance.