Select one of the formal or informal powers of the U.S. President from your text or the lists below.
Select one of the formal or informal powers of the U.S. President from your text or the lists below. Explain how your selected power has played a role in expanding the powers of the modern presidency. Use one specific example of presidential actions.Examples of formal powers granted to the president by the Constitution are:Commanding the military.Appointing Supreme Court justices and cabinet heads.Vetoing legislation.Examples of the president’s informal powers are:Issuing executive orders.Negotiating executive agreements.
Claiming executive privilege. CORE SKILL: distinguishing FORMAL (constitutional/statutory) from INFORMAL powers, and evaluating a power against the CHECKS that constrain it. This is a separation-of-powers question, and the framework matters more than the example.
FORMAL POWERS — grounded in ARTICLE II: Commander in Chief; the VETO (and the POCKET VETO); the power to make treaties (WITH the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate); appointment of judges, ambassadors, and principal officers (with Senate confirmation); the pardon power (notably unchecked — no congressional or judicial override, and this makes it an excellent choice for analysis precisely BECAUSE it is nearly unconstrained); execution of the laws (“take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”); convening Congress; and receiving ambassadors (the basis of the recognition power).
INFORMAL POWERS — not enumerated but arguably more consequential in practice: the BULLY PULPIT (agenda-setting through direct appeal to the public — Neustadt’s famous thesis is that “presidential power is the power to PERSUADE,” because the formal powers are so hemmed in that a president who can only command is weak); EXECUTIVE ORDERS (directives to the executive branch carrying the force of law within it, but revocable by a successor with a stroke of a pen, and subject to judicial review — their fragility is their defining limit and a good analytical point); SIGNING STATEMENTS; EXECUTIVE AGREEMENTS (international agreements that BYPASS the Senate’s two-thirds treaty requirement — a major and constitutionally contested workaround worth analyzing); EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE (recognized but NOT absolute — see US v. Nixon); agenda-setting through the budget proposal; party leadership; and the appointment of agency heads who shape regulation.
THE ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK — use JUSTICE JACKSON’S CONCURRENCE IN YOUNGSTOWN SHEET & TUBE v. SAWYER (1952), which is the single most useful tool in this area and will lift your answer immediately. Jackson’s THREE ZONES: (1) the president acts WITH express or implied congressional authorization — power is at its MAXIMUM; (2) the president acts in the ABSENCE of congressional guidance — a “zone of twilight” where authority is uncertain and depends on the practical circumstances; (3) the president acts AGAINST the express or implied will of Congress — power is at its “LOWEST EBB,” and the action is sustainable only if Congress lacks power over the matter altogether. Locating your chosen power within Jackson’s zones IS the analysis.
THE CHECKS: congressional override of a veto (two-thirds of both houses); the power of the purse; Senate confirmation; impeachment; the War Powers Resolution (and the long-running debate over whether presidents comply with it); judicial review; oversight and investigation; and the practical checks of federalism, the press, and elections.
STRUCTURE: select ONE power → define it and locate its source (formal or informal, and if formal, WHERE in Article II) → give a concrete historical EXAMPLE of its exercise → identify the CHECKS that constrain it → EVALUATE: is this power appropriately balanced, or has it expanded beyond what the framers contemplated? The literature on the “imperial presidency” (Schlesinger) and on the expansion of executive power in the national-security domain gives you a scholarly hook.
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