What are executive orders and how significant are they for presidential power?

by didier11 (student)

Diggers Rogers

Executive orders are instructions to the federal bureaucracy that give guidance on how the president wishes legislation to be implemented. Until the early 1900’s most executive orders where unannounced and undocumented, and were only seen by the agencies upon which they were directed. However, a numbering scheme was instituted by the Department of State, in 1907. These executive orders have a huge significance over American Politics and the power of the President.

As Executive orders aren’t mentioned in the US constitution, they have a huge scope of use as this is only defined by convention. Many critics have said that they are increasingly used by presidents not to facilitate the implementation of existing law, but rather to actually create a whole new law which in fact usurpers the role and function of congress. So, executive orders underwent a further development from 1907 in 1952, as before there were no rules that stated what the president could do in an executive order, but the Supreme Court ruled in ‘Youngstown sheet and Tube Co. V Sawyer’ that Executive Order 10340 from Harry S Truman placing all steel mills in the country under federal power was invalid as rather than simply clarifying a law it actually made the law.

Furthermore, another significance of executive orders upon presidential power, is that executive orders, although they are meant to be overriding and a special power of the president, they can still be nullified by congressional legislation or judicial intervention. This means that they can simply be rejected. The most recent example of Congress nullifying an executive order appears to have involved Executive Order 12806. , issued by President Bush, directed the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a human foetal tissue bank for research projects. The President based this order on his authority under "the Constitution and the ...

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Recent policy changes enacted by executive orders include the imposition by President Bush and subsequent repeal by President Obama via executive order: 13505, of restrictions on stem cell research. This can be found by examining executive order 13435, which The Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary) shall conduct and support research on the isolation, derivation, production, and testing of stem cells that are capable of producing all or almost all of the cell types of the developing body and may result in improved understanding of or treatments for diseases and other adverse health conditions, but are derived without creating a human embryo for research purposes or destroying, discarding, or subjecting to harm a human embryo or foetus. However executive orders may give a president less power than equivalent congressional legislation – for example, it is more difficult for the debt commission set up by President Obama through executive orders to require congress to vote on its proposals than if it had been created by legislation.

In conclusion, I believe that executive orders have a huge significance on the President and particularly on the power that he invests. The significances can be found within many cases especially that involving stem cell research which appears to be a significantly controversial topic.