Presidential Control of Administrative Agencies: A Debate over Law or Politics?
![handle is hein.journals/upjcl12 and id is 641 raw text is: PRESIDENTIAL CONTROL OF ADMINISTRATIVE AGENCIES:
A DEBATE OVER LAW OR POLITICS?
Cary Coglianese
In their recent book documenting presidential assertions of au-
thority, The Unitary Executive: Presidential Power from Washington to
Bush, Professors Steven Calabresi and Christopher Yoo argue that
presidential practice throughout American history supports the view
that the Constitution gives presidents the power to control their
subordinates.' Published in the closing year of the administration of
George W. Bush, The Unitary Executive appeared at a time of consider-
able scholarly and political criticism of President Bush for his efforts
to direct the actions of federal administrative agencies. To some,
Bush's efforts to influence the decisions of political appointees head-
ing executive branch agencies crossed the line between permissible
and impermissible efforts to control agency officials exercising au-
thority delegated directly to them rather than to the President.2 Ca-
labresi and Yoo show that the kinds of actions Bush took, as well as
the kinds of criticisms he received, are far from new in American his-
tory. To the contrary, they assert that the debate over presidential
authority of the executive branch is the oldest . .. debate[] in consti-
tutional law.3
From the vantage point of President Obama's first year in office,
we can safely conclude that this debate did not end with the depar-
ture of President Bush. Despite the current President's efforts to dis-
tance his administration's style and rhetoric from that of his prede-
cessor's, Obama has nevertheless taken steps much like his
predecessors' to ensure that executive branch agencies act in ways
consistent with his priorities. Given the longstanding historical prac-
* Deputy Dean and Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science,
University of Pennsylvania Law School; Director, Penn Program on Regulation. The au-
thor thanks Evan Mendelson for research assistance and the journal staff, especially Klair
Spiller, for editorial assistance.
1 STEVEN G. CALABRESI & CHRISTOPHER S. Yoo, THE UNITARY EXECUTIVE: PRESIDENTIAL
POWER FROM WASHINGTON TO BUSH 4 (2008) [hereinafter CALABRESI & YOO]; see also id.
at 420-27.
2 Peter L. Strauss, Overseer or The Decider? The President in Administrative Law, 75 GEO.
WASH. L. REV. 696, 700-02 (2007).
3 CALABRESI & YOO, supra note 1, at 3.
637](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/upjcl12&div=28&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Presidential Control of Administrative Agencies: A Debate over Law or Politics?
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