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by rayiner
481 days ago
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> The Force is also available to both Jedi and Sith alike. The use of a 'the' nomenclature is not indicative that the subject is solely available to a singular individual, only that the power is available. In your construction, all the work is being done by your use of the word “available.” But the constitution doesn’t say “the executive power is available to the President.” It says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The word “vested” means “secured in the possession of or assigned to a person.” So the executive power isn’t merely available to the President. It’s assigned to and given to the possession of the President. Your Crown example actually proves the opposite of your point. That phraseology reflects the traditional british notion that all executive power is vested in the king, who is the chief prosecutor but may act through delegates: https://digital.sandiego.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=/con... (p. 1707). |
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In your construction, all the work is being done by "the." OK, let's play the same game, this time with the word executive: Suppose that Congress, using its authority under the Necessary and Proper Clause, creates separate governmental agencies — not subject to plenary presidential supervision — and gives those agencies the power to carry out specified tasks. You're complaining that this falls within the definition of "executive" power and thus must be presidentially supervised. The obvious response is: OK, we won't call it "executive" power, we'll call it something else. Word games? Sure, but that's what you're doing.
But, someone might respond, the term "executive power" must be interpreted today as it supposedly was understood by the Framers in 1787. That ipse-dixit contention is purely a matter of what Justice White aptly referred to in Roe as "raw judicial power" — and recall that after Dred Scott, a more-extreme version of such a contention was finally resolved at Appomattox as the culmination of four years of bloody civil war.