Law Commons^™

Interpretation Catalysts And Executive Branch Legal Decisionmaking, Rebecca Ingber

Faculty Scholarship

Recent years have seen much speculation over executive branch legal interpretation and internal decisionmaking, particularly in matters of national security and international law. Debate persists over how and why the executive arrives at particular understandings of its legal constraints, the extent to which the positions taken by one presidential administration may bind the next, and, indeed, the extent to which the President is constrained by law at all. Current scholarship focuses on rational, political, and structural arguments to explain executive actions and legal positioning, but it has yet to take account of the diverse ways in which legal questions arise …