It's a glorious thing to be a Pirate King.
But being president isn't too bad, either. Sure, you've got Congress and that annoying checks-and-balances thing to deal with, but if you just want something to happen, you can get it done yourself—within constitutional limits, of course.
How? The Executive Order.
You can give federal employees a day off, establish new government agencies, impose sanctions on nasty countries, free the slaves, throw Japanese Americans into interment camps, or order the desegregation of a high school by the Screaming Eagles.
Opponents of Executive Order 10730 called it an abuse of power that denied states their traditional right to deal with public education. There's a general consensus that presidential power has increased since the founding of the U.S. There are ways that Congress and the Judiciary can reverse an Executive Orders, but that's a pretty rare occurrence. More often, they're just revoked by a new president. Every president issues executive orders, and the opposition party always calls them illegal and unconstitutional, and implies the prez is acting like a dictator.
P.S. Hey, current prez: think you could executive-order every American a pair of these?
Questions About Presidential Power
- Why was an executive order necessary to contain the Little Rock crisis?
- In a State v. Feds smackdown, who wins?
- Could the United States stay united without a central government?
- Do executive orders mean that the executive branch is more powerful than Congress?
Chew on This
Eisenhower believed he had a "clear obligation to act" in Little Rock, even if that meant using armed troops to enforce the law.
Faubus believed the rights of Arkansans who didn't want to integrate were being ignored by the federal government.