HORTON: Six Questions for Steven Calabresi, Author of The Unitary Executive

[L. Coyote]

September 30 - http://harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003611
Six Questions for Steven Calabresi, Author of The Unitary Executive
Scott Horton


Northwestern University Law Professor Steven Calabresi was a co-founder of the Federalist Society and has been in the vanguard of the conservative movement ever since. He served in the Reagan Administration and the first Bush Administration and has been closely associated with a number of legal theories tied to the Republican Party and its theories of governance. One of them, which has recently come into the public foreground, is the concept of the Unitary Executive. Calabresi has just co-authored a book entitled The Unitary Executive with Christopher Yoo. I put six questions to Steve Calabresi on the concept of the Unitary Executive.

1. Politicians use the phrase “Unitary Executive” as a sort of shorthand for expansive assertions of executive authority. They also tend to imply that this concept is something of fairly recent vintage. Your book makes plain that they’re wrong on both points. Tell us how you define the term, and give us a sense of its historical provenance?

The term “Unitary Executive” dates back to the writings of Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist Papers .......

[ixion]

1. "Unitary Executive" = Dictator. Period.

if it quacks like a duck...

[bemildred]

2. Interesting. Methinks he doth protest a bit too much. nt