Civilian Power over Military, Cabinet, Pardon Power, Appointments
Section 2
[LinkX]
Article II, Section 2 is principally concerned with outlining the powers of the president, but given the enormous power of the modern presidency, it seems remarkably short and vague in its prescriptions. Certainly, the most important -- and controversial -- of those powers has developed from the president's role as commander in chief of the army and navy of the United States and of the militias of the several states. That role, which has given the president' enormous power to make war,'' has sometimes come in conflict with the power of Congress to ''declare war'' as well as with Congress's power to control the financial appropriations necessary to make fighting a war possible.
By the terms of Article II, section 2, the president has the primary role of entering into treaties with other nations, although it reserves to the Senate the right to approve any treaty before it assumes the force of law.
The president has the power, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint ambassadors, ministers, justices of the Supreme Court, and ''all other Officers of the United States.'' In recent decades, as the Supreme Court has become a more powerful and assertive branch of the federal government, members of the Senate have responded by asserting more vigorously their right to advise and consent with respect to the appointment of justices of the Court.
The president's use of the power to appoint ''all other Officers of the United States'' has increased in direct proportion to the growing power of the federal government and of the executive branch in particular. Although the Founding Fathers no doubt assumed that the president would appoint members of a presidential ''cabinet,'' they would perhaps have been surprised at the growth in the size and scope of the bureaucracy serving each of the cabinet departments. The president's cabinet has expanded from four members in President Washington's day (the secretaries of treasury, war, and state and the attorney general) to fifteen (not including the vice president) today.
