The letter of the law: Administrative discretion and Obama\u27s domestic unilateralism

In his 2014 State of the Union address Barack Obama pledged to act without Congress on a variety of fronts, following up his we can\u27t wait campaign of unilateralism before the 2012 election. The partisan furor this engendered tended to obscure the longstanding efforts of presidents to faithfully execute the law in a manner that aligns with their policy preferences. This paper examines the broad logic of those efforts, and delineates five areas where the Obama administration has been particularly aggressive: in its (1) recess appointments; (2) refusal to defend federal law (notably, the Defense of Marriage Act) in court; (3) use of prosecutorial discretion in declining to pursue violations of immigration and drug laws; (4) use of waivers; and (5) its utilization of the regulatory process to interpret the meaning of statutes, as with the Clean Air Act and the Affordable Care Act. Presidents do have flexibility in many cases; but this ends where they seek to alter the plain letter of the law.

Continuity Trumps Change: The First Year of Trump\u27s Administrative Presidency

From campaign rhetoric to tweets, President Trump has positioned himself as disrupter in chief, often pointing to administrative action as the avenue by which he is leaving a lasting mark. However, research on the administrative presidency begins with the premise that all presidents face incentives to use administrative tools to gain substantive or political traction. If, as this article suggests, Trump\u27s institutional standing differs little from his recent predecessors, then how much of the Trump presidency represents a change from past norms and practices\u27 How much represents continuity, or the perennial dynamics of a far-from-omnipotent executive in an ongoing world of separate institutions sharing powers (Neustadt 1990, 29)\u27 To answer this, we tracked presidential directives and regulatory policy during Trump\u27s first year in office. We found evidence of continuity, indicating that in its use of administrative tactics to shape policy, the Trump White House largely falls in line with recent presidencies

Entretien avec Andrew Rudalevige

Entretien réalisé par Vincent Michelot, Politique américaine, n°31, p. 45-58, 2018, URL : https://www.cairn.info/revue-politique-americaine-2018-2.html