Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-2010
Abstract
Recent controversy over the unitary executive may be part of what Steven Calabresi and Christopher Yoo have called the “oldest debate in constitutional law.” Yet in this essay, I ask whether this debate is as much legal as it is political. Focusing on the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to grant California a waiver from national automobile emissions standards, I contrast the divergent reactions to presidential influence under President Bush and President Obama. In both administrations the EPA faced clear presidential pressure, but critics of President Bush’s involvement generally applauded the actions taken by President Obama. The main difference appears to be the policy outcomes the EPA adopted in the Bush and Obama administrations, not that one president interfered and one did not interfere. I further suggest that politics appears to dominate the debate over presidential involvement in administrative decision making because the purported constitutional line between permissible and impermissible involvement is murky and incapable of providing any solid constraint on presidential power. If no meaningful or practical legal constraint on presidential supervision really exists, then perhaps politics is exactly where the debate over presidential authority should remain.
Keywords
Administrative law, unitary executive, constitutional law, independent agencies, presidential power, politics, public policy, directives, oversight
Publication Title
University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law
Repository Citation
Coglianese, Cary, "Presidential Control of Administrative Agencies: A Debate over Law or Politics?" (2010). All Faculty Scholarship. 974.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/974
Included in
Administrative Law Commons, American Politics Commons, Environmental Law Commons, Environmental Policy Commons, Law and Politics Commons, Legislation Commons, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, President/Executive Department Commons
Publication Citation
12 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 637 (2010).