This book explores how American presidents--especially those of the past three decades--have increased the power of the presidency at the expense of democracy.

This one-of-a-kind guide provides a crash course in the laws governing the President of the United States. In an engaging and accessible style, two law professors explain the principles that inform everything from President Washington's disagreements with Congress to President Trump's struggles with the courts, and more. Timely and to the point, this guide provides the essential information every informed civic participant needs to know about the laws that govern the president-and what those laws mean for those who want to make their voices heard.

Biographers, historians, and journalists explore how selected US presidents of the 20th century have commanded, wielded, and sometimes dissipated the influence of the office. They look at the executive careers of Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and William Clinton. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Presidential power is perhaps one of the most central issues in the study of the American presidency. Since Richard E. Neustadt's classic study, first published in 1960, there has not been a book that thoroughly examines the issue of presidential power. Presidential Power: Theories and Dilemmas by noted scholar John P. Burke provides an updated and comprehensive look at the issues, constraints, and exercise of presidential power. This book considers the enduring question of how presidents can effectively exercise power within our system of shared powers by examining major tools and theories of presidential power, including Neustadt's theory of persuasion and bargaining as power, constitutional and inherent powers, Samuel Kernell's theory of going public, models of historical time, and the notion of internal time. Using illustrative examples from historical and contemporary presidencies, Burke helps students and scholars better understand how presidents can manage the public's expectations, navigate presidential-congressional relations, and exercise influence in order to achieve their policy goals.

This is a revised edition of Presidential power, 1980, which was originally published by Wiley in 1960. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

For this new edition, Louis Fisher has updated his arguments to include critiques of the Clinton & Bush presidencies, particularly the Use of Force Act, the Iraq Resolution of 2002, the 'preemption doctrine' of the current U.S. administration, & the order authorizing military tribunals.

The surprising truth behind Barack Obama's decision to continue many of his predecessor's counterterrorism policies. Conventional wisdom holds that 9/11 sounded the death knell for presidential accountability. In fact, the opposite is true. The novel powers that our post-9/11 commanders in chief assumed—endless detentions, military commissions, state secrets, broad surveillance, and more—are the culmination of a two-century expansion of presidential authority. But these new powers have been met with thousands of barely visible legal and political constraints—enforced by congressional committees, government lawyers, courts, and the media—that have transformed our unprecedentedly powerful presidency into one that is also unprecedentedly accountable. These constraints are the key to understanding why Obama continued the Bush counterterrorism program, and in this light, the events of the last decade should be seen as a victory, not a failure, of American constitutional government. We have actually preserved the framers’ original idea of a balanced constitution, despite the vast increase in presidential power made necessary by this age of permanent emergency.