Regarding constitutionally undefined executive orders, please consider the following material which has been previously introduced on this message board.
To begin with, the Founding States had made the first numbered clauses in the Constitution, Sections 1-3 of Article I, evidently a good place to hide them from Constitution-ignoring presidents like Obama, to clarify that all federal legislative powers are vested in the elected members of Congress, not in the executive or judicial branches. In my opinion this means that Congress has a constitutional monopoly on federal legislative powers. So executive branch executive orders cannot be law because only Congress has the constitutional authority to make laws.
Next, the suspicious thing about the hearings concerning the constitutionality of Obama's executive orders is the following. The Supreme Court had previously clarified, in the case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 1952, that executive orders don't have the force of law unless they are based on laws made by Congress.
Executive order
So the White House's claims that Obama's executive orders are a way to bypass Congress not only have no basis in constitutional law, but are probably intended to impress low-information voters who don't understand legislative, executive and judicial powers.
So not only does the referenced article wrongly give the impression that the Supreme Court is breaking new ground in testing the constitutionality of executive orders imo, but I question if activist justices are planning to ignore case precedent which clarifies that executive orders don't intrinsincly have the force of law so that they can argue that Obama's executive orders are constitutional.
After all, activist justices had wrongly ignored that the Supreme Court had historically clarified that the states have never delegated to Congress, via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for public healthcare purposes so that they could give the green light to unconstitutional federal Obamacare.
Are we having fun yet?
Excellent summary of the situation!
And because Obama has polarized the country, we will find that if Congress exercises its lawful authority, the Obama base will see that as obstructionist Republicans, rather than what it is: a destruction of our rule of law, which will eventually impact the Dems negatively as well as everyone else.
Spot on. The Legislature can delegate the authority to the executive to investigate and formulate laws, but only the Legislature can pass laws. Only then do they have the “force of law” which is executed by the Executive Branch. It’s time to dismantle the Executive legislation via agency regulation and rules making.
I’d also like to see an end to all administrative law. It too is an unconstitutional usurpation of the judicial function by the executive. We have courts of law, we don’t need executive courts of law, no matter how “convenient”.