Executive Orders and the Decline of Law

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"Bipartisan executive orders

The president of the United States wields the power to issue an “executive order,” which is an order supposedly based on current law. For example, near the end of his presidency, Bill Clinton issued an executive order greatly reducing the amount of arsenic (which often appears naturally in groundwater in Western communities) that was permitted in a municipal water supply. He said that this order was based on the Clean Water Act and other laws Congress previously had passed.

Likewise, upon taking office, George W. Bush issued an executive order changing how the federal government would fund research into embryonic stem cells.

Once issued, an executive order has the force of law and can serve as the basis for challenges in court. For example, environmental groups recently took the Bush administration to court, claiming it was not obeying Clinton’s executive orders to close huge portions of national forest lands to loggers, and the courts agreed. Likewise, Congress recently attempted to pass legislation expanding the federal role in embryonic stem cell research in order to counter Bush’s original executive order. As former Clinton aide Paul Begala once remarked, “Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kinda cool.”