Executive Orders and the Decline of Law

There is no specific provision in the Constitution for presidents to issue executive orders. However, as was recently made clear when Congress made a somewhat feeble attempt to rein in the proclivities of CIA field officers and U.S. military personnel to torture suspected terrorists held by U.S. forces, the Bush administration claims to reserve the right to interpret legislation as it sees fit. In other words, Bush (not to mention other presidents before him and almost certainly presidents to follow) declares that the executive branch owns the power supposedly held by the judicial branch to be the interpreter of legislation.

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Emboldened by the failure of Congress and the courts to hold their ground, the executive branch has grown in power, authority, and its ability to control the lives of individual Americans without fear of legal retribution. From Roosevelt’s executive order seizing private gold holdings of Americans, to his order to illegally intern Japanese-Americans during World War II, to Clinton’s executive order to bomb Serbia in 1999, to the slew of orders from the Bush administration, executive orders have become tools for the president and executive-branch bureaucrats to impose their own agendas that by themselves could not get past Congress. Moreover, Bush’s recent statements after signing an “anti-torture” bill from Congress that he would interpret the law in any way he saw fit shows only how big the problem has become.

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