Research Catalog

Title

By order of the President : the use and abuse of executive direct action / Phillip J. Cooper.

Author

Cooper, Phillip J.

Publication

• Lawrence, Kansas : University Press of Kansas, [2014]
• ©2014

Supplementary Content

Cover image

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xviii, 531 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

• "Scholars and citizens alike have endlessly debated the proper limits of presidential action within our democracy. In this revised and expanded edition, noted scholar Phillip Cooper offers a cogent guide to these powers and shows how presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama have used and abused them in trying to realize their visions for the nation. As Cooper reveals, there has been virtually no significant policy area or level of government left untouched by the application of these presidential "power tools." Whether seeking to regulate the economy, committing troops to battle without a congressional declaration of war, or blocking commercial access to federal lands, presidents have wielded these powers to achieve their goals, often in ways that seem to fly in the face of true representative government. Cooper defines the different forms these powers take--executive orders, presidential memoranda, proclamations, national security directives, and signing statements--demonstrates their uses, critiques their strengths and dangers, and shows how they have changed over time. Cooper calls on events in American history with which we are all familiar but whose implications may have escaped us. Examples of executive action include, Washington's "Neutrality Proclamation"; Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation; the more than 1,700 executive orders issued by Woodrow Wilson in World War I; FDR also issued the order to incarcerate Japanese Americans during World War II; Truman's orders to desegregate the military; Eisenhower's numerous national security directives. JFK's order to control racial violence in Alabama. As Cooper demonstrates in his balanced treatment of these and subsequent presidencies, each successive administration finds new ways of using these tools to achieve policy goals--especially those goals they know they are unlikely to accomplish with the help of Congress. A key feature of the second edition are case studies on the post-9/11 evolution of presidential direct action in ways that have drawn little public attention. It clarifies the factors that make these policy tools so attractive to presidents and the consequences that can flow from their use and abuse in a post-9/11 environment. There is an important new chapter on "executive agreements" which, though they are not treaties within the meaning of the U.S. Constitution and not subject to Senate ratification, appear in many respects to be rapidly replacing treaties as instruments of foreign policy"--
• "Scholars and citizens alike have endlessly debated the proper limits of presidential action and only gradually begun to understand the nature of the president's special powers and their impact on American life. In this new and much-expanded edition of his path-breaking study, Phillip Cooper again offers a comprehensive and cogent guide to these powers and shows how presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama have used and abused them in trying to realize their visions for the nation"--

Series Statement

Studies in government and public policy

Uniform Title

Studies in government and public policy.

Subjects

• Executive orders
• Executive power
• Executive orders > United States > History
• POLITICAL SCIENCE / Government / National
• HISTORY / United States / 20th Century
• POLITICAL SCIENCE / Government / Executive Branch
• History
• United States > Politics and government
• Executive power > United States > History

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 499-508) and index.

Contents

The tools of presidential direct administration -- Executive orders: directing the executive branch -- Executive orders strategies, tactics, and political realities -- Presidential memoranda: executive orders by another name -- Presidential proclamations: rule by decree -- National security directives: secret orders both foreign and domestic -- Executive agreements: when is a treaty not a treaty? -- Presidential signing statements: a different kind of line-item veto -- Presidential direct action and the Washington rules: the dangers of power tools.

Call Number

KF5053

ISBN

• 9780700620111
• 0700620117
• 9780700620128
• 0700620125

LCCN

2014030541

OCLC

890310055

Author

Cooper, Phillip J., author.

Title

By order of the President : the use and abuse of executive direct action / Phillip J. Cooper.

Publisher

Lawrence, Kansas : University Press of Kansas, [2014]

Copyright Date

©2014

Edition

Second edition, revised and expanded.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Studies in government and public policy

Studies in government and public policy.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 499-508) and index.

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Research Call Number

*R-USLHG KF5053 .C578 2014