(no subject)

[novapsyche]

Can the Presidency be abdicated?

Actions can't be reversed, but laws can, because laws are words.

Nixon resigned the Presidency because he wanted to avoid impeachment. However, impeachment is the only removal for the office of the Presidency for which the Constitution provides.

When Nixon acted--when he abdicated the office of the Presidency--he imbued the office with powers it hadn't had before.

"Abdication (from the Latin abdicatio, disowning, renouncing, from ab, from, and dicare, to declare, to proclaim as not belonging to one) is the act of renouncing and resigning from a formal office, especially from the supreme office of state. In Roman law the term was also applied to the disowning of a family member, as the disinheriting of a son. The term commonly applies to monarchs. A similar term for an elected or appointed official is resignation."

Since then, some conservatives have been devising ways to enlarge the office of the Presidency even more.

The upswing in reliance on signing statements during the Reagan administration coincides with the writing by Justice Samuel A. Alito – then a staff attorney in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel – of a 1986 memorandum making the case for "interpretive signing statements" as a tool to "increase the power of the Executive to shape the law." Alito proposed adding signing statements to a "reasonable number of bills" as a pilot project, but warned that "Congress is likely to resent the fact that the President will get in the last word on questions of interpretation."

Edit: Silly me, I should have read the 25th Amendment. Still, I do think that by resigning, the act itself confers the concept of the Presidency with the sense of being "the supreme office of state," which would elevate it above the Senate, even though they are supposedly co-equal branches of government.

Comments

[pgdudda.livejournal.com]

I'm no expert on Constitutional Law, but isn't interpretation of laws the domain of the Supreme Court?

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Andrew Jackson said otherwise; said all three branches were entitled (and required?) to interpret the Constitution.

[davehogg.livejournal.com]

Still, I do think that by resigning, the act itself confers the concept of the Presidency with the sense of being "the supreme office of state," which would elevate it above the Senate, even though they are supposedly co-equal branches of government.

I'm not sure what you mean. Senators can resign - Bob Dole did to run for President - as can Supreme Court justices.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Best discussion of such things I've seen is in Wilfred E. Binkley's President and Congress.

There have been Presidents who asserted that the President was the supreme authority, and Congressional leaders who asserted that the President and his Cabinet were servants of Congress.

And then there was Alexander Hamilton, who seems to have considered the Secretary of the Treasury equivalent to the British Prime Minister.