Presidential Defiance of Unconstitutional Laws
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- ISBN 9780313300646
- Publication Date: 20 Aug 1998
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Since the mid-1970s American presidents have, with growing frequency, claimed that they have the power to ignore any law they believe is unconstitutional. Beginning with a review of the English constitutional backdrop against which the U.S. Constitution was framed, this book demonstrates that the Founders did not intend to confer on the president a power equivalent to the royal prerogative of suspending the laws, which was stripped from the English Crown in 1689. The author examines each of the nearly 150 instances in which presidents from George Washington to Jimmy Carter have objected to the validity of a law, in order to determine whether or not the president then ignored the law in question. This examination of the historical record reveals that prior to the mid-1970s the White House only rarely failed to honor a law that it believed to be unconstitutional.
CHRISTOPHER N. MAY is the James P. Bradley Professor of Constitutional Law at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. Before entering law teaching he was a Legal Services attorney in San Francisco. He is the author of several books, including In the Name of War: Judicial Review and the War Powers since 1918 (1989), which won the Alpha Sigma Nu National Jesuit Book Award.
