However, these cases do not determine whether Congress can limit the president`s own impeachment power, for example, by making the impeachment of an official subject to a certain level of “good reason.” The Supreme Court first answered this question in the affirmative in Humphrey`s Executor v. United States (1935), which limited the President`s discretion to dismiss members of the Federal Trade Commission to cases of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or misconduct in the performance of their duties.” Morrison v. Olson reiterated the lawfulness of creating federal directors who are protected at will from dismissal by the president, as long as any restriction on impeachment “does not unduly interfere with the president`s exercise of his constitutionally appointed duties.” While this formulation is not a clear test for identifying the officers for whom presidents must have the power to dismiss at will, the doctrine at least implies that presidents must have some degree of depositionary authority for all officers. That is, presidents must be able to obtain at least the dismissal of an officer for a good cause, so that the president is not able to ensure that the laws are faithfully enforced. The Court has since ruled that U.S. officials cannot be protected from impeachment of the president by multi-level restrictions on deportation. Therefore, subordinate staff members appointed by heads of department who cannot themselves be dismissed at will by the President must be able to be dismissed at will by the officials they appoint. Free Enterprise Fund vs Public Co. Accounting Supervisory Board (2010). The U.S. Constitution provides that the President “has the power to enter into treaties by and with the counsel and consent of the Senate, provided that two-thirds of the senators present agree” (Article II, Section 2). Treaties are binding agreements between nations and are part of international law. Treaties involving the United States also have the power of federal legislation and are part of what the Constitution calls “the highest law in the land.” Bradley began with an overview of the various legal mechanisms used to include the United States in international treaties, including: Article II treaties pursued with the approval of the Council and the Senate; contractual implementation agreements approved by other international agreements; Agreements between Congress and the executive branch approved by law ex ante or ex post; and exclusive executive arrangements made by the President under his own constitutional authority.
He then described the current state of the legal framework that Congress has created to promote transparency in the use of these agreements. A number of laws require the online publication of all such international agreements within 180 days of their entry into force, but contain various fallout and do not require an explanation from the legal authority under which they were prosecuted. Another requires that executive agreements be reported to Congress, but not necessarily to the public, within 60 days of their entry into force – including secret agreements communicated through a special process – along with an explanation of their legal basis, usually included in an associated cover letter. The President is Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army and Navy and of the various state militia when called upon to serve effectively in the United States; It may require the written opinion of the senior officer of one of the executive divisions on any matter relating to the functions of their respective offices, and it has the power to grant pardons and pardons for crimes against the United States, except in the case of impeachment. The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly give the president the power to enter into executive agreements. However, it may be authorized to do so by Congress, or it may do so on the basis of the authority conferred on it to conduct foreign relations. Despite questions about the constitutionality of executive treaties, the Supreme Court ruled in 1937 that they had the same power as treaties. Since executive agreements are concluded by order of the outgoing president, they are not necessarily binding on his successors. Hathaway went on to describe the results of an investigation conducted by the three co-authors into executive agreements and related cover letters that the executive branch submitted to Congress between 1989 and 2017, which they received at the request of the Freedom of Information Act. Their analysis revealed major gaps with the online publishing regime, as only 31 percent of executive agreements reported to Congress were included in the official online database — far fewer than could be found in comparable private databases.
Other problems also arose in the Congressional reporting system, as a significant number of cover notes indicated that the executive agreements in question had been submitted late, while private databases contained several thousand such agreements that had never been submitted to Congress. More problematically, the cover letters showed that the legal basis for many of the executive`s uses of executive agreements was questionable, as less than half highlighted the explicit legal authority to participate in the executive agreement in question, while 17% cited statutes that could not be plausibly interpreted as such an approval. To address these issues, Hathaway argued that Congress could require the executive branch to publish more widely all international agreements and related cover letters — with specific descriptions of the legal basis of the executive agreement in question — in order to allow for greater public oversight, and perhaps limit the use of funds for them or their entry into effect until they are published or transmitted. Or even without legislation, relevant congressional committees could promote public transparency by choosing to publish the executive agreements and cover letters they receive and by asking authorities for more details about legal authorities in the letters they receive. Executive agreements are often used to circumvent the requirements of national constitutions for treaty ratification. Many nations that are republics with written constitutions have constitutional rules for ratifying treaties. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is based on executive agreements. However, the text, even if supported by history, sheds less light on the constitutional requirements for the president`s relationship with other government instruments that Congress creates but that are not part of the federal judicial system – that is, the plethora of “departments,” “agencies,” “administrations,” “organs,” and “commissions” that exist within the executive branch.
In recent decades, there has been much passionate advocacy for the idea of the so-called “unified executive” — in particular, the view that Article II, by giving the president the power to enforce the law, prohibits Congress from extending that authority to individuals or organizations that are not under the president`s control. Proponents of this unified executive reading of Article II insist that the Constitution guarantees the president full powers that Congress cannot restrict, both to remove unelected executive directors at will and to determine how such officials should exercise all the discretionary powers they possess under the law. .
