The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers
Author: Alexander Hamilton
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2018-08-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1528785878

Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States.

The Specter of Dictatorship

The Specter of Dictatorship
Author: David M. Driesen
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2021-07-20
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1503628620

Reveals how the U.S. Supreme Court's presidentialism threatens our democracy and what to do about it. Donald Trump's presidency made many Americans wonder whether our system of checks and balances would prove robust enough to withstand an onslaught from a despotic chief executive. In The Specter of Dictatorship, David Driesen analyzes the chief executive's role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey and argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to democracy. Driesen urges the U.S. to learn from the mistakes of these failing democracies. Their experiences suggest, Driesen shows, that the Court must eschew its reliance on and expansion of the "unitary executive theory" recently endorsed by the Court and apply a less deferential approach to presidential authority, invoked to protect national security and combat emergencies, than it has in recent years. Ultimately, Driesen argues that concern about loss of democracy should play a major role in the Court's jurisprudence, because loss of democracy can prove irreversible. As autocracy spreads throughout the world, maintaining our democracy has become an urgent matter.

After Trump

After Trump
Author: Bob Bauer
Publisher: Lawfare Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2020-09-15
Genre: Executive power
ISBN: 9781735480619

In After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency, Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith provide a comprehensive roadmap for reform of the presidency in the post-Trump era. In fourteen chapters they offer more than fifty concrete proposals concerning presidential conflicts of interest, foreign influence on elections, pardon power abuse, assaults on the press, law enforcement independence, Special Counsel procedures, FBI investigations of presidents and presidential campaigns, the role of the White House Counsel, war powers, control of nuclear weapons, executive branch vacancies, domestic emergency powers, how one administration should examine possible crimes by the president of a prior administration, and more. Each set of reform proposals is preceded by rich descriptions of relevant presidential history, and relevant background law and norms, that place the proposed reforms in context. All of the proposals are prefaced by a chapter that explains how Trump--and, in some cases, his predecessors--conducted the presidency in ways that justify these reforms. After Trump will thus be essential reading for the coming debate on how to reconstruct the laws and norms that constitute and govern the world's most powerful office. It's hard to imagine two better co-authors for the task. Both served in senior executive branch positions-in the administrations of Barack Obama and George W. Bush, respectively-and have written widely on the presidency. Bob Bauer served from 2010-2011 as White House Counsel to President Barack Obama, who in 2013 named Bauer to be Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. He is a Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at New York University School of Law, as well as the co-director of its Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic. Jack Goldsmith served as Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel from 2003-2004, and Special Counsel to the Department of Defense from 2002-2003. He is the Learned Hand Professor at Harvard Law School, co-founder of Lawfare, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Together, in this book, they set the terms for the national discussion to come about the presidency, its powers, and its limits.

Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law

Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law
Author: Maurice Adams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 559
Release: 2017-02-02
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1316883256

Rule of law and constitutionalist ideals are understood by many, if not most, as necessary to create a just political order. Defying the traditional division between normative and positive theoretical approaches, this book explores how political reality on the one hand, and constitutional ideals on the other, mutually inform and influence each other. Seventeen chapters from leading international scholars cover a diverse range of topics and case studies to test the hypothesis that the best normative theories, including those regarding the role of constitutions, constitutionalism and the rule of law, conceive of the ideal and the real as mutually regulating.

The President Who Would Not Be King

The President Who Would Not Be King
Author: Michael W. McConnell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2020-11-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 069121199X

Vital perspectives for the divided Trump era on what the Constitution's framers intended when they defined the extent—and limits—of presidential power One of the most vexing questions for the framers of the Constitution was how to create a vigorous and independent executive without making him king. In today's divided public square, presidential power has never been more contested. The President Who Would Not Be King cuts through the partisan rancor to reveal what the Constitution really tells us about the powers of the president. Michael McConnell provides a comprehensive account of the drafting of presidential powers. Because the framers met behind closed doors and left no records of their deliberations, close attention must be given to their successive drafts. McConnell shows how the framers worked from a mental list of the powers of the British monarch, and consciously decided which powers to strip from the presidency to avoid tyranny. He examines each of these powers in turn, explaining how they were understood at the time of the founding, and goes on to provide a framework for evaluating separation of powers claims, distinguishing between powers that are subject to congressional control and those in which the president has full discretion. Based on the Tanner Lectures at Princeton University, The President Who Would Not Be King restores the original vision of the framers, showing how the Constitution restrains the excesses of an imperial presidency while empowering the executive to govern effectively.