The Unitary Executive

This chapter examines the theory of the unitary executive and its deployment in the Trump presidency afgainst the specter of a Deep State. The theory asserts that the president possesses all the executive power, that the incumbent alone is the executive branch. The idea is that anything less than complete control over administration by that individual risks an obfuscation of responsibility, clouding the judgments on presidential performance that “the people” get to deliver retrospectively in the next election. This reading of the Constitution is often joined to a strikingly plebiscitary conception of American democracy. This chapter takes up two issues of special interest. The first is an alternative “republican reading” of the Constitution which anticipates inter-branch collaboration in the control of administrative power. The second is the relationship between the vesting clause of Article II, on which the unitary theory is based, and the selection procedure, which has changed radically since its original constitutional formulation. The chapter concludes by pointing to the distortions of constitutional meaning introduced by joining an expansive reading of the vesting clause to contemporary selection mechanisms.