Presidential Powers

Since the birth of modern Presidency in the 1930’s, Presidential powers have been growing at an alarmingly unreasonable rate. It would seem as though the further into the future we get, the more unconstitutional this country becomes. Many of the laws laid down by our founding fathers were very vague, however, for the most part, they were deciphered and regarded as the law of the land. Recently it would appear that political officials are twisting around these vague entries to fit the criteria that is convenient at the time, or worse, circumventing the laws entirely; thus debilitating our constitutional system of separation of powers. Let’s start with signing statements. According to the Constitution, Article II, the President can sign the bill or veto it. That is the Constitutional limit to his power with signing statements. Modern presidents, however, use these statements as ways to incorporate their own thoughts on the bill and “announcing a president’s intention to violate particular sections of the bill he is signing into law” (Swanson, 4). By doing this he is clearly overstepping his authority as president, since it is

the duty of his Congress to make laws and not his place to either critique them or disregard them. While on the subject of inadvertence to law, let’s go over the ever so continuous controversy of the Anti Torture Act. In 1988 President Ronald Regan signed the UN Convention Against Torture, prohibiting any such acts as to inflict pain or suffering upon a person to obtain information or as punishment. In spite of this, during the Bush reign the Department of Justice legalized these very techniques relevant to Guantanamo Bay. It was said that government officials were “immune from suit because at that time it was unclear whether abusing prisoners at Guantanamo was illegal”. (Fisher, 2). Ambiguous much? And of