It feels silly to remind people that there are three branches of government - the Executive, Legislative and Judicial - that serve the people by providing checks and balances upon the other. If one gets out of control, there are ways to reign them in.
However, in this op-ed from Sunday's Washington Post, Frederick "Fritz" A. O. Schwarz and Aziz Huq do just that, reminding Congress that the Founders were skeptical about unchecked executive power.
"Never before in U.S. history, we believe, has a president so readily exploited a crisis to amass unchecked and unreviewed power unto himself, completely at odds with the Constitution. This departure from historical practice should deeply concern those in both parties who care for the Constitution....Debates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and in the state ratifying conventions that ensued, conclusively undercut the current administration's claim to unaccountable power....
Congress has repeatedly met its constitutional responsibility as a coequal branch, even in times of war, and regardless of partisan interests. Oversight is not a Republican or Democratic issue. In World War II, then-Sen. Harry S. Truman coordinated aggressive inquiries into the Democratic administration's mismanagement of war procurement. During the Civil War, Republicans in Congress drove Lincoln's first secretary of war from office by their investigations.
Today's questions about presidential power are certainly not ones that have Republican or Democratic answers. The institutional imbalance that is evident today should trouble legislators of both parties."
Even more troubling is how the Supreme Court has retreated from years of precedents and its own oversight role to give the executive room to wage a war against a tactic in a manner that demeans the rule of law.
Writing in the Huffington Post today about the Supreme Court's decision not to review the case of the Guantánamo detainees, Aziz Huq notes:
"The Court’s decision not to hear this case is a major blow to human rights values. It leaves on the books a wretchedly bad (and intellectually dishonest) opinion from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and rewards the Administration’s deeply nefarious strategy of delay and obfuscation around Guantánamo."
We can fix these problems. But it's going to take some time, leadership and a recommitment to the principles of our Founding Fathers to bring the change we need.