'...it is startling, even brazen, that some try to claim a "unitary executive" that cannot be challenged by Congress, at least in times of war. Challenging the executive in time of war is precisely the way that America was born. Madison himself could not have been more lucid on this point.
In 1795, he wrote, "Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. In war, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people." A more prescient description of the allure of war - at least for the executive - could hardly be written.
The supreme irony - if not hypocrisy - of the theory of the "unitary executive" is that it is espoused by the very same people who purport that the Judiciary should be bound by an equally phantasmical theory of "original intent." Under this theory the Supreme Court should interpret the Constitution according to the intent of its authors, an intent only these latter-day "originalists" claim to be able to accurately divine.
But the Executive, on the other hand, should be freed entirely from such original intent, liberated to pursue a starkly post-modern vision of a virulently anti-democratic authoritarianism that would have been wholly repugnant to the very same founders. Either Madison and the founders were schizophrenic or the current "theorists" are duplicitous. They can't have it both ways.'Should the President be King? Reflections from the Deep Origins of America
This 'unitary executive' (a code word for a doctrine that favors nearly unlimited executive power or an approach that "holds that all three branches of the federal government have the power and duty to interpret the Constitution") seems to be favoured by Bush, and by his Supreme Court nominee Alito.
Is it in tune with, or does it clash with, the principles of the US constitution?
