Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
1,273
result(s) for
"Separation of powers -- United States"
Sort by:
War powers
Armed interventions in Libya, Haiti, Iraq, Vietnam, and Korea challenged the US president and Congress with a core question of constitutional interpretation: does the president, or Congress, have constitutional authority to take the country to war? War Powers argues that the Constitution doesn't offer a single legal answer to that question. But its structure and values indicate a vision of a well-functioning constitutional politics, one that enables the branches of government themselves to generate good answers to this question for the circumstances of their own times.
Mariah Zeisberg shows that what matters is not that the branches enact the same constitutional settlement for all conditions, but instead how well they bring their distinctive governing capacities to bear on their interpretive work in context. Because the branches legitimately approach constitutional questions in different ways, interpretive conflicts between them can sometimes indicate a successful rather than deficient interpretive politics. Zeisberg argues for a set of distinctive constitutional standards for evaluating the branches and their relationship to one another, and she demonstrates how observers and officials can use those standards to evaluate the branches' constitutional politics. With cases ranging from the Mexican War and World War II to the Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis, and Iran-Contra scandal, War Powers reinterprets central controversies of war powers scholarship and advances a new way of evaluating the constitutional behavior of officials outside of the judiciary.
eBook
Congress's Constitution : legislative authority and the separation of powers
\"Congress is widely supposed to be the least effective branch of the federal government. But as Josh Chafetz shows in this boldly original analysis, Congress in fact has numerous powerful tools at its disposal in its conflicts with the other branches. These tools include the power of the purse, the contempt power, freedom of speech and debate, and more. Drawing extensively on the historical development of Anglo-American legislatures from the seventeenth century to the present, Chafetz concludes that these tools are all means by which Congress and its members battle for public support. When Congress uses them to engage successfully with the public, it increases its power vis-à-vis the other branches; when it does not, it loses power. This groundbreaking take on the separation of powers will be of interest to both legal scholars and political scientists.\"--Publisher website.
Book
Constitutional Dysfunction on Trial
In an original assessment of all three branches, Jasmine Farrier reveals a new way in which the American federal system is broken. Turning away from the partisan narratives of everyday politics,Constitutional Dysfunction on Trial diagnoses the deeper and bipartisan nature of imbalance of power that undermines public deliberation and accountability, especially on war powers. By focusing on the lawsuits brought by Congressional members that challenge presidential unilateralism, Farrier provides a new diagnostic lens on the permanent institutional problems that have undermined the separation of powers system in the last five decades, across a diverse array of partisan and policy landscapes.
As each chapter demonstrates, member lawsuits are an outlet for frustrated members of both parties who cannot get their House and Senate colleagues to confront overweening presidential action through normal legislative processes. But these lawsuits often backfire - leaving Congress as an institution even more disadvantaged. Jasmine Farrier argues these suits are more symptoms of constitutional dysfunction than the cure.Constitutional Dysfunction on Trial shows federal judges will not and cannot restore the separation of powers system alone. Fifty years of congressional atrophy cannot be reversed in court.
eBook
The myth of coequal branches : restoring the constitution's separation of functions
\"The idea that the three branches of U.S. government are equal in power is taught in classrooms, proclaimed by politicians, and referenced in the media. But, as David Siemers shows, that idea is a myth, neither intended by the Founders nor true in practice. Siemers explains how adherence to this myth normalizes a politics of gridlock, in which the action of any branch can be checked by the reaction of any other. The Founders, however, envisioned a separation of functions rather than a separation of powers. Siemers argues that this view needs to replace our current view, so that the goals set out in the Constitution's Preamble may be better achieved\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The failure of the founding fathers : Jefferson, Marshall, and the rise of presidential democracy
The ink was barely dry on the Constitution when it was almost destroyed by the rise of political parties in the United States. As Bruce Ackerman shows, the Framers had not anticipated the two-party system, and when Republicans battled Federalists for the presidency in 1800, the rules laid down by the Constitution exacerbated the crisis. With Republican militias preparing to march on Washington, the House of Representatives deadlocked between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Based on seven years of archival research, the book describes previously unknown aspects of the electoral college crisis. Ackerman shows how Thomas Jefferson counted his Federalist rivals out of the House runoff, and how the Federalists threatened to place John Marshall in the presidential chair. Nevertheless, the Constitution managed to survive through acts of statesmanship and luck.
Despite the intentions of the Framers, the presidency had become a plebiscitarian office. Thomas Jefferson gained office as the People's choice and acted vigorously to fulfill his popular mandate. This transformation of the presidency serves as the basis for a new look at Marbury v. Madison, the case that first asserted the Supreme Court's power of judicial review. Ackerman shows that Marbury is best seen in combination with another case, Stuart v. Laird, as part of a retreat by the Court in the face of the plebiscitarian presidency. This \"switch in time\" proved crucial to the Court's survival, allowing it to integrate Federalist and Republican themes into the living Constitution of the early republic.
Ackerman presents a revised understanding of the early days of two great institutions that continue to have a major impact on American history: the plebiscitarian presidency and a Supreme Court that struggles to put the presidency's claims of a popular mandate into constitutional perspective.
eBook
Supreme court jurisprudence in times of national crisis, terrorism, and war
From the foundation of the American Republic, presidents have had to deal with both internal and external national security threats. From President Washington and his policy of neutrality during the wars between Great Britain and France in the eighteenth century, to President Lincoln and the war to save the union, to President Wilson during the war to end all wars, to President Roosevelt and war of the Greatest Generation, to President Truman and his steel during the forgotten war, and most recently to President Bush and the War on Terror, presidents have had to use their power as commander-in-chief to meet the challenges of national crisis and war. The judiciary, specifically the Supreme Court, has also played an integral part in the historical development and defining of the commander-in-chief power in times of war and national crisis from the earliest days of the republic. How these powers have grown is a consequence of how the presidents have viewed the office of the presidency and how the judiciary has interpreted the commander-in-chief and executive power clauses of the U.S. Constitution over time. Supreme Court Jurisprudence in Times of National Crisis, Terrorism, and War provides a chronological review of the major national security and war events in American history. Garrison reviews the great debates between Hamilton and Madison and Chief Justice Roger Taney and Attorney General Edward Bates on presidential executive power and how subsequent presidents have adopted the Hamiltonian view of the presidency. He also examines how Article III courts, specifically the Supreme Court, have defined, expanded, and established boundaries on the commander-in-chief power. With this historical backdrop, Garrison reveals how, for over two centuries, the judiciary has defended the rule of law and maintained the principle that under the U.S. Constitution neither the guns of war nor threats to safety have silenced the rule of law.
eBook
Political Questions Judicial Answers
Almost since the beginning of the republic, America's rigorous separation of powers among Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches has been umpired by the federal judiciary. It may seem surprising, then, that many otherwise ordinary cases are not decided in court even when they include allegations that the President, or Congress, has violated a law or the Constitution itself. Most of these orphan cases are shunned by the judiciary simply because they have foreign policy aspects. In refusing to address the issues involved, judges indicate that judicial review, like politics, should stop at the water's edge--and foreign policy managers find it convenient to agree! Thomas Franck, however, maintains that when courts invoke the \"political question\" doctrine to justify such reticence, they evade a constitutional duty. In his view, whether the government has acted constitutionally in sending men and women to die in foreign battles is just as appropriate an issue for a court to decide as whether property has been taken without due process. In this revisionist work, Franck proposes ways to subject the conduct of foreign policy to the rule of law without compromising either judicial integrity or the national interest. By examining the historical origins of the separation of powers in the American constitutional tradition, with comparative reference to the practices of judiciaries in other federal systems, he broadens and enriches discussions of an important national issue that has particular significance for critical debate about the \"imperial presidency.\"
eBook