I'm Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, and welcome to the latest of our We the People constitutional podcasts.

The National Constitution Center is the only institution in America,ered by Congress to disseminate information about

the U.S. Constitution on a nonpartisan basis.

And today we discuss the legal and constitutional question of the week if not the month if not the year and

that is the legal and constitutional status of president Barack Obama's recent

executive orders about immigration.

These orders have reignited a long simmering debate about the constitutional scope of

the president's power to act without explicit congressional authorization.

And on Thursday night, the President said he will order executive agencies

to emphasize border security and de-emphasize the deportation of as many as 5 million unauthorized immigrants from the United States.

These moves have been expected for days and they were strongly contested by Republican leaders

who view the immigration orders as the latest in a series of moves

by the president that they believe are unconstitutional.

The clash between the White House and Republican leaders goes back several years, but the President's

orders on immigration are seen by many critics as his broadest acts of executive power.

Today we're going to discuss the core arguments made by the President himself and laid out in greater detail in a 33 page memo issued by the Office of Legal Counsel, namely that the president is acting in the same way as many of his predecessors and that he has indeed both statutory and

constitutional authority to enforce the laws as he sees fit and will also

examine the arguments on the other side.

We're delighted to welcome back two good friends of the National Constitution

Center to review the history of presidents and executive orders

and to examine the recent controversy.

Louis Fisher is scholar in residence at the Constitution Project.

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