Constitution Series Part 19: Article II, Sections 3 and 4

Starting now, we're going to be breezing through sections and, eventually, whole articles of the Constitution with each post. With much of the framework of the country laid down in Article I and the bulk of the President's processes and powers laid out in Sections 1 and 2, the Constitution will begin handling the rest of its details with impressive brevity.

That's not to say the remaining parts are any less dense than what we've seen already, though. I'm preparing to spend quite a bit of time on two relatively short paragraphs today, after all.

Constitution Series Part 18: Article II, Section 2, Clauses 2 and 3

By far the most common accusation lobbed at any given President is that what they're doing is "unconstitutional." I've tried to offer a multi-faceted view of the Constitution so far, and given certain interpretations of the Constitution many such claims have some substance to their argument. It's often the very definition of debatable due to the interpretive nature of the document.

However, the powers listed in this section are theoretically not debatable. (Well, that's not strictly true, as well see, but anyway) These are the explicit powers of a President granted by the Constitution. There's still some room for interpretation here, but simply put, these powers are literally Constitutional.

Constitution Series Part 17: Article II, Section 2, Clause 1

In Section 1 we established the office of the President and went over how to elect one. But what does a President do? There are two basic schools of thought on this: the first is that a President gets all of the powers implied by an executive office, as established in Section 1. The other is that a President is only allowed to do that which he is explicitly allowed to do as laid out in the Constitution and as granted by Congress.

Historically, Presidents have acted mostly under the former assumption, with implicit powers as an executive. In Section 2, however, we're going to go over the President's explicit powers.

Constitution Series Part 16: Article II, Section 1, Clauses 5 through 8

Today we'll finish Section 1 of Article II, which mostly details the process by which a President is elected. Honestly, the fact that this process has remained more or less unchanged for the past two centuries is pretty incredible. Our Constitution is ridiculously scale-able.

Constitution Series Part 15: Article II, Section 1, Clauses 1 through 4

Article II of the Constitution of the United States established the office of the president. Article II, Section 1 is the longest section in the Constitution, with a higher word count than Article I, Section 8. However, despite its length, it's not nearly as dense as Section 8, so don't worry--it won't take five different posts to get through.

My Run for Presidency

I'm running for president in 2020.

I decided this years ago, and it shaped the course of my life far more than it ever should have. It was a dumb idea then, and it's a dumb idea now. However, given the way that it affected my life, I don't think I can simply discard it, no matter how ludicrous it may seem.