The Executive Unbound

After the Madisonian Republic

Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule

Powerful and provocative defense of modern presidential powers from two of America's leading scholars on the subject
Challenges conventional wisdom about the ideal structure of American government
Forces us to rethink our views on the rise of the imperial presidency

The Executive Unbound

After the Madisonian Republic

Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule

Description

Ever since Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. used "imperial presidency" as a book title, the term has become central to the debate about the balance of power in the U.S. government. Since the presidency of George W. Bush, when advocates of executive power such as Dick Cheney gained ascendancy, the argument has blazed hotter than ever. Many argue the Constitution itself is in grave danger. What is to be done?

The answer, according to legal scholars Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule, is nothing. In The Executive Unbound, they provide a bracing challenge to conventional wisdom, arguing that a strong presidency is inevitable in the modern world. Most scholars, they note, object to today's level of executive power because it varies so dramatically from the vision of the framers of the Constitution. But Posner and Vermeule find fault with James Madison's premises. Like an ideal market, they write, Madison's separation of powers has no central director, but it lacks the price system which gives an economy its structure; there is nothing in checks and balances that intrinsically generates order or promotes positive arrangements. In fact, the greater complexity of the modern world produces a concentration of power, particularly in the White House. The authors chart the rise of executive authority, noting that among strong presidents only Nixon has come in for severe criticism, leading to legislation which was designed to limit the presidency, yet which failed to do so. Political, cultural and social restraints, they argue, have been more effective in preventing dictatorship than any law. The executive-centered state tends to generate political checks that substitute for the legal checks of the Madisonian constitution.

Piety toward the founders and a historic fear of tyranny have been powerful forces in American political thinking. Posner and Vermeule confront them both in this startlingly original contribution.

The Executive Unbound

After the Madisonian Republic

Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule

The Executive Unbound

After the Madisonian Republic

Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule

Author Information

Eric A. Posner, Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School, and Adrian Vermeule, John H. Watson, Jr. Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Eric A. Posner is Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, and is the author of The Perils of Global Legalism, Terror in the Balance (written with Vermeule), and Climate Change Justice, among other books. Adrian Vermeule is John H. Watson Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and is the author of Law and the Limits of Reason, Mechanisms of Democracy, and Judging Under Uncertainty, and is the co-author with Posner of Terror in the Balance.

The Executive Unbound

After the Madisonian Republic

Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule

Reviews and Awards

"A refreshingly straightforward case that the modern presidency is unconstrained by law—and that you should like it that way. Even those who...disagree vehemently with the latter proposition will find Posner and Vermuele's arguments provocative and challenging." - American Conservative

"Powerfully argued, this book is an important part of the debate over presidential power in the present world." - Choice

"Provocative." - American Prospect.org

"A thought-provoking book." - Library Journal

"This is a book that will, for many readers, both illuminate and infuriate. It is the most full-throated embrace in recent years of the very important (and always controversial) jurisprudential theories associated with Carl Schmitt, particularly with regard to the accretion of power in the Executive Branch. If their views become widely accepted, American law—or at least the American legal academy—will never be the same again." - Sanford Levinson, author of Our Undemocratic Constitution