Executive Orders: Obama vs. The Constitution

The topic of executive orders is not generally one that gets many people excited. I’m here to change that.

Think of it like this - do you like being free? Do you enjoy being able to work, travel, associate, and speak as you please?

Now ask yourself this, do you want to stand up for what you believe?

If you answered ‘‘yes’ to these questions, then the topic of executive orders should excite you to no end.

John Jay, the original Chief Justice U.S. Supreme Court, once said, “Every member of the State ought diligently to read and to study the constitution of his country. . . . By knowing their rights, they will sooner perceive when they are violated and be the better prepared to defend and assert them.”

John Jay

So, the question becomes, do you know your Constitution? Obama made the headlines this week with new executive action on guns. Was it constitutional? And why does it matter?

First, we must realize that the President of the United States of America is widely considered the most powerful person in the world, however, the powers granted to the President are actually fairly limited. They include:

-Commander in Chief of the Army

-Grant pardons and reprieves for offences against the US

-Make treaties (with advice and consent of the Senate)

-Executive appointees (with advice and consent of the Senate)

-Make recommendations to Congress

-On extraordinary cases, convene or adjourn Congress

-Receive Ambassadors and other public ministers

-”....take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.”

Anyone who knows their Constitution, knows that Congress makes the laws, the President enforces the laws, and the Supreme Court interprets the laws. This is middle school stuff. You will recall, this system is known as “checks and balances”. Our Founding Fathers realized that absolute power corrupts absolutely and therefore wanted to be sure that the powers of the federal government were spread out between three branches that would each have a certain amount of push and pull power over the other branches.

Executive orders and actions have historically been used to fulfill the most important mandate - “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”. While they weren’t termed this way until Lincoln, the precedent was set by the Father of our Country, George Washington.

Right after being sworn in as President (1789), Washington issued an ‘executive order’ requesting the holdover officers of the Confederation government give a report "to impress me with a full, precise, and distinct general idea of the affairs of the United States" that they each handled. Essentially, this was a request from ‘the boss’ asking to be brought up to speed on what each division had going on. This is a Constitutional executive order, that is, it is completely within the power of the President to request that information.

So, back to the original question, were Obama’s executive action on gun control  constitutional? And why does it matter?

Again, let’s turn to back George Washington. In his Farewell Address he warned,

“But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.”

What Washington is telling us is that the ends do not justify the means. President Obama says he wants to keep people safe. Ok, that’s a good goal that everyone would agree on! But the issue is how do you go about doing that? Constitutionally? Or by usurpation (wrongful seizing)? Usurpation results in the end of freedom. We don’t want that.

I attempted to find the actual text of Obama’s executive action. It was nowhere to be found. I discovered the reason being, executive actions are different than executive orders. Executive orders are generally written commands given out by the Chief Executive to his subordinates asking them to perform a task (among other things). Executive action is another way of saying “This is something we (the executive branch) are doing”.

What I did find was a list of what Obama was hoping to accomplish through his executive actions. This included such ambiguous lines as “Make our communities safer from gun violence”, “Shape the future of gun safety”, “Keeping guns out of the wrong hands”, etc. Nothing very helpful there.

Here’s what we do know. We have a Constitution that puts restrictions on the government, not on “We the People”. We have a Second Amendment that guarantees the right to bear arms and states that it shall not be infringed. We have a President and a government operating well outside the Constitutional limits of their powers.

And we have a populace that is woefully uninformed when it comes to their rights. And if you don’t know what your rights are, how will you know when they are trampled?

Jonathan Paine

@painefultruth76

painefultruth1776@gmail.com

(If you simply can’t get enough about executive orders, I suggest you check out “The Use and Abuse of Executive Orders and Other Presidential Directives” by Todd Gaziano, Director of the Center for Legal & Judicial Studies, Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Read it and I guarantee, you’ll be able to impress your friends next time this topic comes up.)