{"content":[{"text":"The Unitary Executive During the Third \n Half-Century, 1889-1945","bbox":{"left":0.227108,"top":0.152523,"width":0.542931,"height":0.064142}},{"text":"Christopher S. Yoo, Steven G. Calabresi, and Laurence Nee","bbox":{"left":0.265672,"top":0.235724,"width":0.46580299999999997,"height":0.01818900000000001}},{"text":"Abstract","bbox":{"left":0.462227,"top":0.308854,"width":0.07268800000000003,"height":0.019639000000000018}},{"text":"Recent Supreme Court decisions and the impeachment of President Clinton has \n reinvigorated the debate over Congress’s authority to employ devices such as spe- \n cial counsels and independent agencies to restrict the President’s control over the \n administration of the law. The initial debate focused on whether the Constitution \n rejected the “executive by committee” employed by the Articles of the Confed- \n eration in favor of a ”unitary executive,” in which all administrative authority is \n centralized in the President. More recently, the debate has begun to turn towards \n historical practices. Some scholars have suggested that independent agencies and \n special counsels have become such established features of the constitutional land- \n scape as to preempt arguments in favor of the unitary executive. Others, led by \n Bruce Ackerman, have suggested that the New Deal represented a ”constitutional \n moment” that ratiﬁed major changes in the distribution of power within the federal \n government. To date, however, a complete assessment of the historical record has \n yet to appear. This Article is part of a larger project that offers a comprehensive \n chronicle that places the battles between the President and Congress over control \n of the administration of federal law in historical perspective. It reviews the period \n between 1889 and 1945, beginning with the Administration of Benjamin Harri- \n son, ending with the Administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and paying \n particular attention to FDR’s failed attempt to reorganized the executive branch. \n The record reveals that these Presidents during this period consistently defended \n the unitariness of the executive branch to a degree sufﬁcient to keep the issue from \n being foreclosed by history. In fact, the episodes discussed provide eloquent illus- \n trations of the legal and normative arguments supporting the unitary executive.","bbox":{"left":0.181134,"top":0.380469,"width":0.634876,"height":0.41946200000000006}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}