Executive orders, signing statements, proclamations, national security directives, and memorandum are all tools that presidents use to shape and influence the policymaking process. It is important to place the current controversy over immigration reform in a larger context of unilateral executive powers. Despite this high level of attention to Obama’s unilateral actions on immigration, health care, and gun reform, we have little understanding of this unique presidential power. In the case of Obama’s immigration reform, it deals with “prosecutorial discretion.” Regardless of the term, unilateral executive powers are a compelling, and long overdue, topic for national discussion. The public, and many in the press, assume that the controversy centers on an executive order. Recently, 43 senators, all Republican, filed a friend-of-the-court brief challenging President Barack Obama’s, as they put it, “extra-constitutional assertion of a unilateral executive power” over immigration policy. Presidential power, especially their unilateral authority, has been a fierce point of contention in the Obama era. Image: Public domain, downloaded from Wikimedia Commons. Roosevelt issued far more executive orders than any other U.S. president to date.
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