Presidential Secrecy and the Law

Presidential Secrecy and the Law PDF Author: Robert M. Pallitto
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
ISBN: 0801892104
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
A look at how U.S. presidents from Truman to George W. Bush employed secrecy and how it has affected the presidency and the American government. State secrets, warrantless investigations and wiretaps, signing statements, executive privilege?the executive branch wields many tools for secrecy. Since the middle of the twentieth century, presidents have used myriad tactics to expand and maintain a level of executive branch power unprecedented in this nation’s history. Most people believe that some degree of governmental secrecy is necessary. But how much is too much? At what point does withholding information from Congress, the courts, and citizens abuse the public trust? How does the nation reclaim rights that have been controlled by one branch of government? With Presidential Secrecy and the Law, Robert M. Pallitto and William G. Weaver attempt to answer these questions by examining the history of executive branch efforts to consolidate power through information control. They find the nation’s democracy damaged and its Constitution corrupted by staunch information suppression, a process accelerated when “black sites,” “enemy combatants,” and “ghost detainees” were added to the vernacular following the September 11, 2001, terror strikes. Tracing the current constitutional dilemma from the days of the imperial presidency to the unitary executive embraced by the administration of George W. Bush, Pallitto and Weaver reveal an alarming erosion of the balance of power. Presidential Secrecy and the Law will be the standard in presidential powers studies for years to come. “The well-organized and clearly written book illustrates the way the president’s use of document classification and state-secrets privilege to solidify presidential control are reinforced by legal decisions sympathetic to presidential power.” —Chronicle of Higher Education

Presidential Secrecy and the Law

Presidential Secrecy and the Law PDF Author: Robert M. Pallitto
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
ISBN: 0801892104
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412

Get Book Here

Book Description
A look at how U.S. presidents from Truman to George W. Bush employed secrecy and how it has affected the presidency and the American government. State secrets, warrantless investigations and wiretaps, signing statements, executive privilege?the executive branch wields many tools for secrecy. Since the middle of the twentieth century, presidents have used myriad tactics to expand and maintain a level of executive branch power unprecedented in this nation’s history. Most people believe that some degree of governmental secrecy is necessary. But how much is too much? At what point does withholding information from Congress, the courts, and citizens abuse the public trust? How does the nation reclaim rights that have been controlled by one branch of government? With Presidential Secrecy and the Law, Robert M. Pallitto and William G. Weaver attempt to answer these questions by examining the history of executive branch efforts to consolidate power through information control. They find the nation’s democracy damaged and its Constitution corrupted by staunch information suppression, a process accelerated when “black sites,” “enemy combatants,” and “ghost detainees” were added to the vernacular following the September 11, 2001, terror strikes. Tracing the current constitutional dilemma from the days of the imperial presidency to the unitary executive embraced by the administration of George W. Bush, Pallitto and Weaver reveal an alarming erosion of the balance of power. Presidential Secrecy and the Law will be the standard in presidential powers studies for years to come. “The well-organized and clearly written book illustrates the way the president’s use of document classification and state-secrets privilege to solidify presidential control are reinforced by legal decisions sympathetic to presidential power.” —Chronicle of Higher Education

Presidents' Secrets

Presidents' Secrets PDF Author: Mary Graham
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300223749
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Ever since the nation's most important secret meeting--the Constitutional Convention--presidents have struggled to balance open, accountable government with necessary secrecy in military affairs and negotiations. For the first one hundred and twenty years, a culture of open government persisted, but new threats and technology have long since shattered the old bargains. Today, presidents neither protect vital information nor provide the open debate Americans expect.

The President and Immigration Law

The President and Immigration Law PDF Author: Adam B. Cox
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190694386
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Who controls American immigration policy? The biggest immigration controversies of the last decade have all involved policies produced by the President policies such as President Obama's decision to protect Dreamers from deportation and President Trump's proclamation banning immigrants from several majority-Muslim nations. While critics of these policies have been separated by a vast ideological chasm, their broadsides have embodied the same widely shared belief: that Congress, not the President, ought to dictate who may come to the United States and who will be forced to leave. This belief is a myth. In The President and Immigration Law, Adam B. Cox and Cristina M. Rodríguez chronicle the untold story of how, over the course of two centuries, the President became our immigration policymaker-in-chief. Diving deep into the history of American immigration policy from founding-era disputes over deporting sympathizers with France to contemporary debates about asylum-seekers at the Southern border they show how migration crises, real or imagined, have empowered presidents. Far more importantly, they also uncover how the Executive's ordinary power to decide when to enforce the law, and against whom, has become an extraordinarily powerful vehicle for making immigration policy. This pathbreaking account helps us understand how the United States ?has come to run an enormous shadow immigration system-one in which nearly half of all noncitizens in the country are living in violation of the law. It also provides a blueprint for reform, one that accepts rather than laments the role the President plays in shaping the national community, while also outlining strategies to curb the abuse of law enforcement authority in immigration and beyond.

Reclaiming Accountability

Reclaiming Accountability PDF Author: Heidi Kitrosser
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022619177X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Americans tend to believe in government that is transparent and accountable. Those who govern us work for us, and therefore they must also answer to us. But how do we reconcile calls for greater accountability with the competing need for secrecy, especially in matters of national security? Those two imperatives are usually taken to be antithetical, but Heidi Kitrosser argues convincingly that this is not the case—and that our concern ought to lie not with secrecy, but with the sort of unchecked secrecy that can result from “presidentialism,” or constitutional arguments for broad executive control of information. In Reclaiming Accountability, Kitrosser traces presidentialism from its start as part of a decades-old legal movement through its appearance during the Bush and Obama administrations, demonstrating its effects on secrecy throughout. Taking readers through the key presidentialist arguments—including “supremacy” and “unitary executive theory”—she explains how these arguments misread the Constitution in a way that is profoundly at odds with democratic principles. Kitrosser’s own reading offers a powerful corrective, showing how the Constitution provides myriad tools, including the power of Congress and the courts to enforce checks on presidential power, through which we could reclaim government accountability.

Presidential Secrecy and the Law

Presidential Secrecy and the Law PDF Author: Robert M. Pallitto
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801885839
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Publisher Description

Power Wars

Power Wars PDF Author: Charlie Savage
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316286605
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1067

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Book Description
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage's penetrating investigation of the Obama presidency and the national security state. Barack Obama campaigned on changing George W. Bush's "global war on terror" but ended up entrenching extraordinary executive powers, from warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention to military commissions and targeted killings. Then Obama found himself bequeathing those authorities to Donald Trump. How did the United States get here? In Power Wars, Charlie Savage reveals high-level national security legal and policy deliberations in a way no one has done before. He tells inside stories of how Obama came to order the drone killing of an American citizen, preside over an unprecendented crackdown on leaks, and keep a then-secret program that logged every American's phone calls. Encompassing the first comprehensive history of NSA surveillance over the past forty years as well as new information about the Osama bin Laden raid, Power Wars equips readers to understand the legacy of Bush's and Obama's post-9/11 presidencies in the Trump era.

Executive Privilege

Executive Privilege PDF Author: Raoul Berger
Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Demonstrates that the presidential claim of authority to withhold information is without historical or constitutional foundation.

Executive Privilege

Executive Privilege PDF Author: Mark J. Rozell
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801849008
Category : Executive privilege (Government information)
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Drawing on White House and congressional documents as well as on personal interviews, Mark Rozell provides both a historical overview of executive privilege and an explanation of its importance in the political process. He argues for a return to a pre-Watergate understanding of the role of executive privilege.

Veering Right

Veering Right PDF Author: Charles Tiefer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520248325
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Tiefer has constructed a meticulous, rigorous, critical analysis of Bush Administration initiatives that he contends circumvent legal and public scrutiny.

Contested Ground

Contested Ground PDF Author: Dan A. Farber
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520343948
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
"Presidential power is hotly disputed these days - as it has been many times in recent decades. Yet the same rules must apply to all presidents, those whose abuses of power we fear as well as those whose exercises of power we applaud. This book is about what constitutional law tells us about presidential power and its limits. It is very difficult to strike the right balance between limiting abuse of power and authorizing its exercise when needed. This book advocates a balanced, pragmatic approach to these issues, rooted in history and Supreme Court rulings"--