A list of all of the Executive Orders put in place by Presidents

[thewayne]

Friends sent this to me (thanks, Rich & Karyn!), it's something that I've wanted to see for a long time.

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/index.html

Comments

[silveradept]

Notice how there's a whole lot more of them as you accelerate toward the modern era? Each President is using them more than before, same with the "signing statements". Tricky ways of either maintaining or subverting the balance of powers.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I thought these were the equivalent of signing statements. I wonder where we could find those?

[silveradept]

They are not. The Executive Order is a tool of the president that "does stuff", often where there wasn't anything before. It's a tool of power that can create agencies and other Executive offices. Signing statements are intended to provide guidance to the executive agencies on interpretation and possible strategems for execution of the law that has been signed by the President. They are the President's opinion, rather than his fiat, in theory.

Signing statements are likely attached to their appropriate laws, although I don't know if they're actually published in U.S. code proper. It would make sense that they would be. Thomas may be able to help in some regards as to finding signing statements. I would think they are published somewhere attached to their appropriate laws.

[quasar273.livejournal.com]

I think some (most?) of GWB's signing statements have been classified. So he says he's not going to abide by the whole bill he's signing into law, but he won't even announce publicly which parts he's planning to ignore. For 'national security,' of course.

[silveradept]

That's thoroughly possible, although the last time people really took a look at them, there seems to be a bit of a boilerplate part attached that "the Executive will interpret this in such a way such that it doesn't interfere with what we believe to be our Constitutional authorities" to all the ones that are there. If there are, indeed, classified signing statements, I'm very curious as to what is contained in them.

[silveradept]

Following up, I went up to campus and asked the GovDocs reference staff on duty where I might find signing statements, and he recommended The American Presidency Project's Signing Statement Page as the place to go looking. Happy hunting.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Thank you, squire!

[quasar273.livejournal.com]

It isn't a monotonic progression with more coming from each President. George H.W. Bush made very few (2?). But it's certainly noticeable that the scrollbar is only halfway down the page when '01 starts. Also noticeable that there were none from GWB before 9/11 but they came thick and fast after.

[silveradept]

And are continuing to arrive in pairs, packs, or otherwise. This whole "unitary executive" thing probably helps to propagate more EOs than before, as the Amdinistration tries to find and exploit more loopholes in the process.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Bush has made more EO's and signing statements than ALL the presidents before him combined.

I don't think our system of government was that thoroughly broken to require that amount of executive correction.

[silveradept]

It's not, as far as I know. The people in it might be that thoroughly borked, but the system itself seems to do all right.

With Mr. Bush, it seems to be more grabs for power and trying to cover his own arse on things that are probably unethical, if not illegal, running the executive branch like an oligarchy answerable to none, rather than the branch of government that faithfully executes the laws that have been promulgated by the legislature, subject to modification by the opinions of the judiciary.