Dolan, Chris J.

English

University of Central Florida (UCF): STARS (Showcase of Text, Archives, Research & Scholarship)

University of Central Florida STARS Faculty Bibliography 2000s Faculty Bibliography 1-1-2003 The presidency and the law: The Clinton legacy Chris J. Dolan University of Central Florida Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/facultybib2000 University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Bibliography at STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Bibliography 2000s by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact STARS@ucf.edu. Recommended Citation Dolan, Chris J., "The presidency and the law: The Clinton legacy" (2003). Faculty Bibliography 2000s. 3707. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/facultybib2000/3707 The Presidency and the Law: The Clinton Legacy. Edited by David Gray Adlerand Michael A. Genovese. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. Pp.xi, 234. $40.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.)Except for a symposium in the September 1999 issue of PS: Political Scienceand Politics, the constitutional and legal consequences of President Bill Clinton’spersonal behavior and policies have yet to be thoroughly examined. Filling thevoid, the edited volume The Presidency and the Law brings together a distin-guished group of essayists to provide a measured and historical analysis of theconstitutional and legal legacy of the Clinton White House. The research strat-egy reflects the legalist approach in presidency studies and relies on historicaldocumentation, biographical works, secondary journalistic accounts, and thePublic Papers of the President. While there are several drawbacks, the volumerepresents a contribution to the presidency literature and serves as a reference forwider audiences interested in the constitutional ramifications of this highly controversial president.On the whole, the essayists succeed in capturing the swinging pendulum of the Clinton presidency and the Republican Congress using the classic “invitationto struggle” metaphor. Thomas Cronin encapsulates the overall theme: “Presidentsand Congress regularly try to push each other’s constitutional and legal bound-aries. Tugs-of-war are nothing new in Washington, DC. Yet Clinton and Congress,as you will read in these chapters, brought these clashes to a new level in severalareas” (xii). Mark Rozell’s chapter on executive privilege bears this out. Clinton’sassertion of executive privilege in the travel office inquiry and in defense of theFirst Lady regarding her deliberations in the Lewinsky investigation were unprece-dented abuses that will forever taint presidential claims of secrecy.The impeachment drama of 1998 and early 1999 illustrated that both the executive and legislative branches are capable of exercising constitutional brinks-manship. For Robert Spitzer, congressional Republicans took full advantage ofthe Independent Counsel (IC) statute and used their 1994 legislative victory toexact revenge on Democratic investigations into the Reagan and Bush Adminis-trations. The appointment of Kenneth Starr was a reflection of the intense desireto politicize investigations into Paula Jones’s harassment allegations, the White-water scandal, the Vince Foster suicide, and the Monica Lewinsky affair. UsingRichard Pious’s “legal backlash” and “political frontlash” designations, DavidGray Adler and Nancy Kassop contend that Clinton’s expansive exercise of pres-idential prerogative diminished the prestige of the Oval Office and usurped theprinciple of executive independence in Article II. Clearly, the Clinton impeach-ment transformed constitutional struggles between the presidency and Congressinto a nasty form of partisan politics never before seen in American politics.The implications for presidential power are complicated. Kassop argues thatwhile interbranch conflict intensified during the Clinton years, the Clinton legacyreinforces the model of executive advantage. As evidence, she points to Clinton’sdecision to order air strikes against Serbia without legislative consent immedi-ately after the Senate impeachment trial. However, Louis Fisher maintains that1268 Book ReviewsThis content downloaded from 132.170.199.166 on October 03, 2019 10:04:34 AMAll use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).while Clinton was politically successful in escaping removal from office, his“self-inflicted injuries” harmed the legitimacy of the presidential institution.Along these lines, Victoria A. Farrar-Myers argues that the extent of Clinton’sexploits as fundraiser-in-chief transformed the Democratic Party into a softmoney machine that served the interests of the White House at the expense ofthe party. For Adler, “President Clinton made no effort to curtail executiveaggrandizement of power or to stem the tide of legislative abdication, nor did heseek to restore congressional authority” (177).While the volume possesses substantive strength, the reader should be mindfulof several apparent drawbacks. The focus on constitutional and statutory sourcesof authority overlooks the importance of political context, a common accusationby critics of the legalist tradition. Nowhere in the analysis is a discussion of howClinton’s self-destructive behavior, use of party resources for self-promotion, andabuse of constitutional authority produced significant political consequences forDemocrats in 2000. For example, to what extent did Clinton’s actions play a rolein Vice-President Al Gore’s inability to prevent just enough mavericks in hisliberal base from supporting Ralph Nader?A related example deals with the political ramifications of Clinton’s unilateraldecision to use force in the former Yugoslavia only two months after his acquit-tal in the Senate. In contending that such a decision was an exercise in presi-dential prerogative, the contributors fall short in advancing tentative politicalanswers as to why the Republican Congress failed to oppose the White House.Relevant political factors, such as favorable public approval of the president, abooming economy, international political pressures, and public criticism of Houseand Senate Republicans are not adequately discussed. In general, the volume doesnot make an effective distinction between the informal dynamics of executivepower, which often produce political opportunities for policy action, and formalauthority structures constrained by constitutional and statutory provisions.In addition to the substantive limitations of the legalist perspective, the volumedoes not lend itself to theory building, hypothesis testing, or methodological rigor.Making judgments based on interpretations of legal authority and constitutionalstructures may stimulate lively debates, but do not produce data necessary toarrive at empirical generalizations or to enhance theoretical significance. Whilesuch limitations are not unique to legalists, the problem is that the volume’s con-tributors do not put forth political or scientific interpretations of Clinton’s legallegacy. As a result, the contributors confirm the obvious, that the Clinton WhiteHouse, like others before it, interpreted legal provisions in order to concentrateauthority in the executive branch at the expense of Congress.The Presidency and the Law challenges presidency scholars to raise importantnormative questions of accountability, responsiveness, and responsibility regard-ing the constitutional parameters of presidential power. Despite its limitations,scholars should welcome it as a contribution to the literature on the constitutionalimplications of the Clinton presidency.Chris J. Dolan, University of Central FloridaBook Reviews 1269This content downloaded from 132.170.199.166 on October 03, 2019 10:04:34 AMAll use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).

The presidency and the law: The Clinton legacy

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The presidency and the law: The Clinton legacy

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