In a Lawfare Blog post, Professor Andrew Kent and Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic discuss former President Trump’s history with executive power and the latest on executive power reform.
“I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.”
So said Donald Trump in 2019, reflecting on his perception of the powers of his office. Trump’s understanding of executive authority may have been oversimplified, but his time in office revealed a great deal about the dangerously broad powers of the presidency and the ease with which the executive can exploit weaknesses in existing systems of regulation and oversight.
Anyone who read the news during those four years could easily compile their own list of abuses of executive power.
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The post-Trump period should have been a moment ripe for reforms of executive power. The post-Nixon era is a useful comparison. In the years after Watergate, the death of J. Edgar Hoover, and the ugly denouement of the Vietnam War, Congress bestirred itself to enact significant reform across a variety of domains of presidential and executive power. Crucially, Presidents Ford and Carter were broadly supportive of congressional reform efforts, and pushed forward with internal executive branch upgrades at the same time. Ford and Carter also filled key posts, such as the attorney general’s office, with committed reformers. Scandal and crisis opened up political space for creative restructuring of the executive branch. One might have hoped, post-Trump, to see the same type of energy for reform —though admittedly the partisan dynamics are less favorable to legislative cooperation today than they were in the 1970s.
