Article II: An Originalist View
The Constitution vests the executive power in one person, the President. There is no fourth branch of government.
The Overview
The facts, straight
Originally written February 2025.
When our nation’s drafters finalized our Constitution they outlined three separate branches of government and assigned powers to each, reserving the remaining powers to the people and to the states. In the two and a half centuries since, we have gotten significantly far from that original structure and such departure has been to our detriment.
It is time to recalibrate and reset the way we implement our Constitutional principles. By doing so, we can bring about a renewed clarity to our national governmental institutions and by reducing the scope of government we can reduce the out-of-control deficit spending that threatens to bankrupt our nation and destabilize our national security.
Article II of the Constitution outlines Presidential authority and specifies that all of the powers of the entire Executive Branch of government are vested in one person –– the President. This extraordinary concentration of power within one elected official was intentional and was designed to ensure that the other more ministerial branches of government – the Legislature which holds the power of the purse, and the Judicial which can settle debates regarding constitutional interpretations – do not gain so much power as to be capable of running the nation without a direct connection to the ballot box. The people can readily hold one person accountable for their actions, holding hundreds of legislators or judges accountable is much more nebulous.
The Presidency is intended to be an expedient executor of the people’s wishes unbound by endless bureaucratic rules and delays. The concept of independent agencies was a judicial invention with no basis in Constitutional power. In Humphries Executor the court decided that some Executive Branch agencies were able to act independently from the Executive. This goes directly against the plain language of Article II which vests all of these powers in the President. Naturally the President’s subordinates are not lawfully capable of acting beyond his authority and are subject to removal for disobedience.
If we allow independent agencies to act beyond the authority of the Presidency they are accountable essentially to no one. The court would have us believe that the President cannot exert control over his own subordinates. This would tie the hands of the President in a way not permitted by the Constitution. There is no fourth branch of government, but the court would have us believe that the administrative state somehow exerts power that does not exist in the Constitution.
If we have a constitutional crisis at all in this nation, it is the Court which has caused it by failing to faithfully interpret the constitution and stay within its own Constitutional lane.
Sources & Citations
- Legal Information Institute, “U.S. Constitution, Article II”.
- Legal Information Institute, “Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935)”.
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