In George Conway’s latest op-ed in the Washington Post about what actions should be taken by Congress after the release of the Mueller Report, he references a research paper co-written by three Fordham Professors. The paper titled, Faithful Execution and Article II was written by professors Andrew Kent, Ethan J. Leib, and Jed Handelsman Shugerman and included in Harvard Law Review.
That’s especially damning because the ultimate issue shouldn’t be — and isn’t — whether the president committed a criminal act. As I wrote not long ago, Americans should expect far more than merely that their president not be provably a criminal. In fact, the Constitution demands it.
The Constitution commands the president to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” It requires him to affirm that he will “faithfully execute the Office of President” and to promise to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” And as a result, by taking the presidential oath of office, a president assumes the duty not simply to obey the laws, civil and criminal, that all citizens must obey, but also to be subjected to higher duties — what some excellent recent legal scholarship has termed the “fiduciary obligations of the president.”