The American Conservative
Defending the Indefensible
Eric Posner gives intellectual cover to the unitary executive
My college alumni magazine is featuring an article entitled
“Octopotus”
on the kind of reasoning in some jurisprudential circles that has
supported the “unitary executive.” The article is about the University
of Chicago Law School’s Professor Eric Posner, whose most recent book is
The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic,
co-authored with Harvard’s Adrian Vermeule. Posner and Vermeule would
appear to agree that when George W. Bush declared the US Constitution to
be just a piece of paper he was being candid and also acting in the
best interests of the American people. Posner unambiguously sees the
non-constitutional accumulation of presidential power as a good thing,
enabling rapid response to crises, and describes the Madisonian
separation of powers in government as a “historical relic.”
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