Honey, They Shrunk the Congress

[ProSense]

Editorial Observer

Honey, They Shrunk the Congress

By ADAM COHEN
Published: October 30, 2007

<...>

Mr. Mukasey suggested the answer would be no. That was hardly his only slap-down of Congress. He made the startling claim that a president can defy laws if he or she is acting within the authority “to defend the country.” That is a mighty large exception to the rule that Congress’s laws are supreme.

The founders wanted the “people’s branch” to be strong, but the Bush administration has usurped a frightening number of Congress’s powers — with very little resistance. The question is whether members of Congress of both parties will do anything about it.

Congress is often described as one of three coequal branches, but that is not entirely true. As Akhil Reed Amar, a Yale law professor, observed in “America’s Constitution: a Biography,” Article I actually makes Congress “first among equals, with wide power to structure the second-mentioned executive and third-mentioned judicial branches.”

Article I, which describes Congress’s powers, is the Constitution’s first, longest and most generously worded article. It gives Congress a wide array of specific powers, but also broad authority to pass laws that bring to life “all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.”

more

Adam Cohen: Congress Should Be First Among Equals

[Richard Steele]

1. Kicked and recommended