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The Transformative Twelfth Amendment, Joshua D. Hawley

William & Mary Law Review

Scholars have long treated the Twelfth Amendment as a constitutional obscurity, a merely mechanical adjustment to the electoral college—and perhaps a less than successful one at that. This consensus is mistaken. In fact, the Twelfth Amendment accomplished one of the most consequential changes to the structure of our constitutional government yet. It fundamentally altered the nature of the Executive and the Executive’s relationship to the other branches of government. The Amendment changed the Executive into something it had not been before: a political office. The presidency designed at Philadelphia was intended to be neither a policymaking nor a representative institution, …

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The Legislator-In-Chief, Vasan Kesavan, J. Gregory Sidak

William & Mary Law Review

The State of the Union and Recommendation Clauses of Article II, Section 3provide that the President "shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient. "Those thirty-one words envision the President as the lead active participant in the embryonic stages of the making of laws. Eight separate principles animate the President's legislative duties and powers before the presentment process. When the State of the Union and Recommendation Clauses are seen to have this textual and analytical subtlety, they reveal …

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