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88 B.U. L. Rev. 505 (2008)
Eleven Reasons Why Presidential Power Inevitably Expands and Why It Matters

handle is hein.journals/bulr88 and id is 515 raw text is: ELEVEN REASONS WHY PRESIDENTIAL POWER INEVITABLY EXPANDS AND WHY IT MATTERS WILLIAM P. MARSHALL* IN TRO DU CTION ............................................................................................... 505 I. THE EXPANSION IN PRESIDENTIAL POWER .......................................... 507 A . B ackground ................................................................................. 507 B. Reasons Why Presidential Power Continues to Expand ............. 509 1. The Constitutional Indeterminacy of the Presidency ............. 509 2. The Precedential Effects of Executive Branch Action .......... 510 3. The Role of Executive Branch Lawyering ............................ 511 4. The Growth of the Executive Branch .................................... 514 5. Presidential Control of the Administrative State ................... 515 6. Presidential Access to and Control of Information ................ 515 7. The M edia and the Presidency .............................................. 516 8. The Presidency in Popular Culture ........................................ 516 9. M ilitary and Intelligence Capabilities ................................... 517 10. The Need for Government To Act Quickly ........................... 518 11. The Increasingly Polarized Two-Party System ..................... 518 II. A CONSTITUTIONAL IMBALANCE? ...................................................... 519 III. RECALIBRATING THE BALANCE: SOME MODEST SUGGESTIONS ......... 521 INTRODUCTION When I teach presidential power, the first thing I ask my students is to imagine a different President in office. If they support the current President and believe those who oppose him are doing so for partisan or otherwise illegitimate reasons, they should visualize a President whom they completely distrust. Conversely, if they dislike the current President, they should conceive of the President in power as someone they support and that those opposing him are acting illegitimately. This exercise is helpful, I believe, for focusing attention on the underlying constitutional issues rather than upon the wisdom, or lack thereof, of a particular President's policies. Nevertheless, the exercise may be harder than it seems. Views as to whether or not an exercise of presidential power is legitimate tend to be based less upon legal abstractions than upon perceptions of the particular President in power. Someone supporting a particular President, for example, is likely to believe that Congress should not have the power to interfere with the President's . William P. Marshall, Kenan Professor of Law, University of North Carolina. I am grateful to the participants in this Symposium for their comments and questions and to the editors of the Boston University Law Review for their edits and suggestions.

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