“The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations,” according to a statement made in 1800 by John Marshall.
This so-called “sole organ” doctrine has frequently been invoked by the executive branch “to define presidential power broadly in foreign relations and national security, including assertions of an inherent executive power that is not subject to legislative or judicial constraints,” writes constitutional scholar Louis Fisher in a new Law Library of Congress study (pdf).
“When read in context, however, Marshall’s speech does not support an independent, extra-constitutional or exclusive power of the President in foreign relations.”
“The concept of an Executive having sole power over foreign relations borrows from other sources, including the British model of a royal prerogative,” Fisher concludes.
Fisher’s analysis of the sole organ doctrine is the first in a series of new studies of inherent presidential power prepared at the request of Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV). A copy was obtained by Secrecy News.
See “The ‘Sole Organ’ Doctrine” by Louis Fisher, Law Library of Congress, Studies on Presidential Power in Foreign Relations, Study No. 1, August 2006.
The bootcamp brought more than two dozen next-generation open-source practitioners from across the United States to Washington DC, where they participated in interactive modules, group discussions, and hands-on sleuthing.
Fourteen teams from ten U.S. states have been selected as the Stage 2 awardees in the Civic Innovation Challenge (CIVIC), a national competition that helps communities turn emerging research into ready-to-implement solutions.
The Fix Our Forests Act provides an opportunity to speed up the planning and implementation of wildfire risk reduction projects on federal lands while expanding collaborative tools to bring more partners into this vital work.
Public health insurance programs, especially Medicaid, Medicare, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), are more likely to cover populations at increased risk from extreme heat, including low-income individuals, people with chronic illnesses, older adults, disabled adults, and children.