Julian Mortenson on 'The Executive Power'

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4.7 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2019

⏱️ 53 minutes

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Summary

Julian Mortenson, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, is the author of a remarkable new article entitled "Article II Vests Executive Power, Not the Royal Prerogative," forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, and available on SSRN.

Recently, Benjamin Wittes spoke with the professor about the article, which Mortenson has been working on for years—as long as the two have known each other. The article explores the history of exactly three words of the U.S. Constitution—the first three words of Article II, to be precise: "the executive power."

Huge claims about presidential power have rested on a conventional understanding of these three words. Julian argues that this conventional understanding is not just partially wrong, or mostly wrong, but completely wrong, as a matter of history. And, he tries to supplant it with a new understanding that he argues is actually a very old understanding of what those words mean.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair
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0:14.7	That's patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:18.2	Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair
0:25.6	no bull and the aftermath.
0:30.0	This episode of the LawFair podcast is brought to you by Blinkist, giving you key ideas from
0:35.2	bestselling non-fiction distilled by experts into manageable bite-size text and audio.
0:41.3	Get a free seven day trial at Blinkist.com slash LawFair.
0:45.3	President can make treaties who get to terminate them.
0:53.9	Congress can declare war, what if not not all hostilities are war, what about bombing
0:57.6	Syria in response to human rights violations?
1:00.7	How about negotiations over an agreement before you get there?
1:03.8	What about removing officers, right?
1:04.8	There's a whole range of things that are, I mean, there's no way of getting around it,
1:09.4	really important to the running of a country that aren't spoken to by the text of the
1:13.4	constitution.
1:14.8	I'm Benjamin Withiss and this is the LawFair podcast April 16th, 2019.
1:21.2	Julian Mortensen is a professor of law at the University of Michigan.
1:25.9	He is also the author of a remarkable new article entitled Article 2 Vests Executive Power,
1:33.6	Not the Royal Paragative.
1:35.6	The article is forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review and is available online at the
1:40.9	SSRN website.
	...

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