Welcome back to our Learning Journey on the presidency and the Constitution! Now that we understand the issues and principles that the founders considered while drafting the Constitution, we can dive into the specific powers the Constitution grants to the executive branch.
According to the Constitution, The president was to have five main responsibilities, as set out in Article 2, Section 2, and Section 3:
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Faithfully execute the laws of the land;
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Defend the land as commander in chief - when a war is declared by an enemy or by Congress;
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Make treaties, appoint ambassadors, and serve as the nation’s representative when dealing with foreign governments;
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Appoint Supreme Court justices and other high officials;
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Participate in law-making.
Today, we will cover the first three of these powers.
Executing the Law of the Land:
Faithfully executing the laws of the land is one of the most fundamentally important obligations of the presidency. The president is required to do so by the Take Care (or Faithful Execution) Clause in Article 2, Section 3. To faithfully execute the laws of the land, the presidency was assigned executive power that was mostly undefined. There was a general understanding during the Constitutional Convention that a president would need to supervise a bureaucracy composed of skilled, knowledgeable personnel who could help implement the laws of the land, however, this understanding was not spelled out.
Read On:
Defending the Land as Commander in Chief:
The framers agreed that the president would command the armed forces - with several explicit reservations. The desire for constraint was perhaps the natural result of widely held fears stemming from the knowledge that many kings and princes had used their military forces in ways that brought misery, such as by demanding heavy taxes and conscription to support a war or by using the military to repress the population. It was understood from the beginning that the president would be fully empowered to act in defense of the nation if any foreign power should declare war against the United States of America, but the power to declare war on behalf of the United States rested with Congress. James Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention explained the general consensus behind this decision: giving Congress the power to declare war would still leave the president with power to repel sudden attacks.
Other than for national self-defense, the president’s war powers were quite constrained. Congress, not the president, was to decide if and when to declare war as well as if and when to suppress domestic insurrections. Congress was also to decide whether to create an army, how the army and navy would be funded, whether to call up the state militia, and how the army, navy, and the state militia would be organized.
Pop Quiz!
True or False: The founders all believed that the executive branch should be weak in order to prevent tyranny.
Relationships with Foreign Powers:
The framers constrained the president’s powers when dealing with foreign governments because they wanted to prevent a president from being seduced by a foreign power to harm the country. For example, according to James Madison’s notes at the Constitutional Convention, Gouverneur Morris observed that the president “… may be bribed by a greater interest to betray his trust; and no one would say that we ought to expose ourselves to the danger of seeing the first Magistrate in foreign pay without being able to guard against by displacing him... One would think the King of England well secured against bribery. Yet Charles II was bribed by Louis XIV.” To guard against such a possibility, the framers set out several constraints in the Constitution. Article 2 of the Constitution gives the President the ability to make treaties as well as to appoint ambassadors and other public ministers, but there are also checks on those powers. Any treaties made must also be ratified by a ⅔ majority in Congress, and the power to regulate international commerce rests solely with Congress. Moreover, the Emoluments Clause prohibits the president from “accept[ing] of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State.”
What's Next?
Today we covered what the Constitution says about the first three duties of the president. Tomorrow, we’ll delve into the rest of the powers given to the executive branch by the Constitution.
Go Deeper:
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