Paranoid about the "Unitary Executive" questions at Alito

[pinkpops]

hearings, I did some snoopin.. I was wondering is this related to the "only following orders" defense for those doing the snooping, and the "I'm the king ah er President" defense for Bubble Boy.

I found this here paper:
http://www.users.muohio.edu/kelleycs/paper.pdf#search='unitary%20executive%20theory'

part of which says:

The importance of departmentalism to the unitary executive is it provides a
constitutional underpinning for the president’s interpretive power, which lies at the heartof the unitary executive. Departmentalism can be traced to “Federalist 49,” in whichMadison writes: “The several departments being perfectly co-ordinate by the terms of their common commission, none of them, it is evident, can pretend to an exclusive or
superior right of settling the boundaries between their respective powers.”

Departmentalism has the support of at least one Supreme Court justice. In a 1987
concurring decision, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that “…it was not enough simply to
repose the power to execute the laws (or to appoint) in the President; it was also
necessary to provide him with the means to resist legislative encroachment upon that
power. The means selected were various, including a separate political constituency, to
which he alone was responsible, and the power to veto encroaching laws…or even to
disregard them when they are unconstitutional.”10

[coldiggs]

1. One of the big probles with the unitary executive would be something like

what came up in the hearings. If the FEC where looking into one of the president's donors could he order the FEC to stop.

[pinkpops]

2. Yeah - I remember that now - who was asking the question?

[coldiggs]

3. I want to say Kennedy

[newyawker99]

4. Hi coldiggs!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast: