Madison's Nightmare

by Shane, Peter M.

• ISBN13: 9780226749396
• ISBN10: 0226749398
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-05-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

The George W. Bush administration's ambitiouseven breathtakingclaims of unilateral executive authority raised deep concerns among constitutional scholars, civil libertarians, and ordinary citizens alike. But Bush's attempts to assert his power re only the culmination of a near-thirty-year assault on the basic checks and balances of the U.S. governmenta battle waged by presidents of both parties, and one that, as Peter M. Shane warns inMadison's Nightmare, threatens to utterly subvert the founders' vision of representative government.Tracing this tendency back to the first Reagan administration, Shane shows how this era of "aggressive presidentialism" has seen presidents exerting ever more control over nearly every arena of policy, from military affairs and national security to domestic programs. Driven by political ambition and a growing culture of entitlement in the executive branchand abetted by a complaisant Congress, riven by partisanshipthis presidential aggrandizement has too often undermined wise policy making and led to shallow, ideological, and sometimes outright lawless decisions. The solution, Shane argues, will require a multipronged program of reform, including both specific changes in government practice and broader institutional changes aimed at supporting a renewed culture of government accountability.From the war on science to the mismanaged war on terror,Madison's Nightmareoutlines the disastrous consequences of the unchecked executiveand issues a stern wake-up call to all who care about the fate of our long democratic experiment.

Author Biography

Peter M. Shane is the Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He is a coauthor and coeditor of A Little Knowledge: Privacy, Security and Public Information after September 11.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Madison's Nightmare: How the Federal Government Became Unchecked and Unbalanced	p. 1
Checks and Balances in Law and History	p. 27
Iraq and the (Unlearned) Lessons of Vietnam: Presidentialism and the Pathologies of Unilateral Policy Making	p. 56
Presidentialism, National Security, and the Breakdown of Government Lawyering	p. 82
Form over Accountability: Executive Privilege, Signing Statements, and the Illusion of Law	p. 112
The President's Personal Bureaucracy: Administrative Accountability and the Unitary Executive	p. 143
Recovering the Madisonian Dream: Visions of Democracy, Steps to Reform	p. 175
Notes	p. 211
Index	p. 241
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