Please reread that
paragraph. It defines the duties and responsibilities of the President. If you
can find anywhere in there the words, “executive order(s)” you may be suffering
from a penumbra or emanation.
From the very beginning,
Presidents have issued Executive Orders. That may be reasonable and logical
given the responsibility to see that the “Laws be faithfully executed.” The
words would seem to direct the President to restrict his orders to implementing
the laws passed by Congress and ascertain that they are being faithfully
executed! There isn’t anything said about “legislation” or “legislating” since
that would mean the President is beyond his authority and encroaching on the
exclusive Congressional responsibility that “All legislative Powers herein
granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States . . .” (Art. I, Sec.
1).
For a few examples of
Presidents having by-passed their Constitutional responsibilities and
commitments, let's start with Abraham Lincoln. Unilaterally, he set aside a
basic, guaranteed right, by denying the “writ of habeas corpus” (Art. I, Sec.
9) to those accused of crimes against the government (Union forces
essentially). Accepted and approved at the time, it became obvious in
subsequent examination that it was unconstitutional. It should have been
rejected on those grounds at the time pronounced.
A second and equal egregious
example would be in the Roosevelt's (FDR) order 39066 which served to
incarcerate 150,000 Japanese Americans at the beginning of WW II simply because
they were of Japanese ancestry or descendants thereof. While the Supreme Court
and later Presidents and Congress addressed this abomination, it did not remove
the blight on our record of ignoring the “rule of law” vs the rule of men!
And finally, we come to
today and the most recent Executive Order that supposedly has the force of law
to entitle illegal immigrants to share in the benefits of lawful citizens. This
situation is still open at the time of this writing. Nevertheless, if one is a
student of the Constitution and its provisions, one has to ask whereby does the
President believe he has the authority or power to establish such a ruling?
Nowhere in the Constitution does it authorize the President to “legislate”!
That, as noted earlier, is the sole prerogative of Congress. It would appear to
behoove Congress therefore to step into such situations and deny the
individual, department or division of the government an attempt to usurp power
they were never granted.
Beyond the examples given,
even a cursory examination of the many rulings of the EPA demonstrates that
this department is regularly issuing orders that restrict the activities of
citizens and their businesses yet take on the force of law. This also appears
to violate the limited government concept embodied in the Constitution. Those
are my views. What are yours? Reach me at constitutionviews@gmail.com © Copyright 2015 Hillard W. Welch
