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Executive Powers: The Role Of The Supreme Court In An Expanding Presidency, Gale M. Filter

All Student Theses

In the "Pacificus-Helvidius" debate of 1793, Alexander Hamilton locked horns with James Madison in a classic exchange of broadsides on the issue of express versus inherent executive powers. In his interpretation of presidential powers, Hamilton sows the seeds for an argument which justifies the exercise of executive powers in combating situations of domestic emergency and in matters concerning the general welfare or public interest. The seeds of this theory took firm root more than sixty years later in the administration of Abraham Lincoln. Subsequently, the growth of these roots was stimulated by the Supreme Court's decisions in the famous cases …