83
votes
Accepted
Can a US president have someone sent to prison?
In a word: no. The President cannot just order someone to prison.
The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizure except on probable cause of a crime being committed.
The Fifth ...
- 27.8k
60
votes
Accepted
Can a President mandate Upvotes?
A president has the power, under the general terms of Article 2, to instruct the various federal agencies how to act, and how to spend the money that they already have. Any such order is then subject ...
- 115k
60
votes
Can a US president have someone sent to prison?
It is absolutely correct that a president cannot just point at someone and say, "Jail that person!" and have it happen automatically.
What a president can do is go to the Attorney General and say, "...
- 89.3k
58
votes
Accepted
Where does Trump's authority to cut funding to WHO come from, if Congress controls spending?
You are correct, Congress does control the purse strings, and has the final say on this. However, there are ways in which Trump can get around this.
Let's first look at what Trump actually announced:
...
CDJB♦
- 105k
45
votes
DeSantis' "US Constitution’s 'leverage points'... to exercise the 'true scope' of presidential power"; something new or based on existing theories?
DeSantis isn't expressing any particularly new idea here, nor is there any actual political theory behind this. He's offering a 'total war' conception of politics — effectively an anti-idealistic ...
- 67.7k
36
votes
Accepted
What does the POTUS do, exactly?
Hiring and firing top employees in federal government
Right, subject to the approval of the Senate, the President appoints the cabinet.
So, yes, the President has limited direct contact with ...
- 928
33
votes
Can a US president have someone sent to prison?
During the civil war Abraham Lincoln had members of the Maryland state legislature arrested and jailed without charge. He was concerned that Maryland would also secede, leaving D.C. between two ...
- 339
33
votes
How can the US President create a waiver for patent enforcement?
These statements aren't saying that the US President is waiving patent protections, but that the administration supports waiving patent protections. Specifically, the current administration is voicing ...
- 10.2k
26
votes
What does the POTUS do, exactly?
Direct things POTUS can do
Among things you didn't mention:
Legislate from executive seat.
Signing statements, and especially executive orders. So far, SCOTUS didn't slap that down as violation of ...
- 91.8k
25
votes
Accepted
Why didn’t the Framers of the US Constitution clarify who has the power to suspend habeas corpus?
I'd expect that if you asked the framers, they would say that they were pretty clear about who can suspend habeas corpus-- Congress. The only reference to habeas corpus in the Constitution is in ...
- 6,203
25
votes
DeSantis' "US Constitution’s 'leverage points'... to exercise the 'true scope' of presidential power"; something new or based on existing theories?
TLDR: based on his Florida experience, we can expect he'd "game the system" on anything possible: running agencies, distributing funding, supreme court nominations (although that's ...
- 145k
24
votes
Accepted
Presidential power over Congress
Officially Trump himself can do little to penalize his opponents in Congress. If the President had such powers there would be nothing to stop him from using them against the opposition members (in ...
22
votes
Accepted
In American Politics, why is the Justice Department under the President?
I've heard a DA can choose to prosecute or not to prosecute people for virtually any reasons.
The concept is called prosecutorial discretion. It is the authority of the district attorney for each ...
- 6,570
21
votes
Isn't the question of partisanship of US supreme court judges contradictory to the separation of powers?
Not really. The president of the United States has no formal power over the Supreme Court, besides nominating justices. They cannot tell the justices how to rule, nor can they "fire" them, ...
- 13.6k
18
votes
Accepted
Can the Supreme Court strike down an impeachment that wasn’t for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ or is Congress the sole judge?
Unknown, but unlikely
The constitution uses the word "sole" in only two places:
The House shall have the sole Power of Impeachment;
The Senate shall have the sole power to try all ...
- 16.5k
17
votes
Can a US president have someone sent to prison?
The President is not a Law Enforcement Officer despite his role being ultimately in charge of their policy, so he cannot personally place someone under anything other than citizen's arrest. However, ...
- 6,570
16
votes
Accepted
Can the US President recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights for the USA or does that need an act of Congress?
Essentially, yes
By current precedent from the US Supreme Court, the US president not only has authority to recognize foreign nations, but exclusive authority. The pertinent case is Zivotofsky v. ...
- 13.6k
15
votes
Can a President mandate Upvotes?
TL;DR
The President very likely couldn't do it without (a) the cooperation of Reddit's owners, or (b) an Act of Congress.
Explanation
Let us suppose items (a) and (b) above are not forthcoming.
In ...
- 11.4k
14
votes
Accepted
Guardrails against the German president from "going rogue"; violating norms and guidelines and unilaterally making/blocking foreign policy decisions?
The Bundespräsident has neither the executive nor the legislative power to enforce decisions.
Executive Power:
In a presidential democracy the president has control over a lot of government agencies, ...
- 1,535
13
votes
Accepted
How can the US President create a waiver for patent enforcement?
I'm not a patent lawyer and the legislative framework regarding the status of the WTO agreements in the US is pretty complex, but under FSIA a US company by itself doesn't have a lot of recourse if a ...
- 145k
13
votes
Accepted
What are the types of decisions of the Supreme Court that can be overruled by the U.S. Congress?
Many (most?) cases the US Supreme Court hears are about what an act of Congress means. For instance, the 2020 case of Facebook v. Duguid was about whether Facebook's two-factor authentication violated ...
- 13.8k
13
votes
Accepted
Was a Czech president ever successful in having a legislation proposal dropped after his veto or threat thereof?
Yes - in his first term, Václav Havel vetoed four bills which the Chamber of Deputies did not subsequently overrule. Additionally, he used his power under the Constitution to refer to the ...
CDJB♦
- 105k
12
votes
Congressional Review Act--Is it Constitutional?
The non-delegation doctrine works the opposite way: it restricts how much power Congress can give to the executive, not how much power Congress can take for itself. Congress has the sole legislative ...
- 13.8k
12
votes
Accepted
How can Congress end a war over the objections of the President
There's quite a lot of verbiage about POTUS war powers, but it's otherwise unclear exactly how Congress stops a war, even if is the one that has to declare it.
If it was considered urgent enough that ...
11
votes
Has a court ever struck down an election result in the United States?
Courts have over-turned elections
While researching another question, I found the case of McNally v Tollendar in which the Michigan state court over-turned a recall election for county office. There ...
- 23.8k
11
votes
Accepted
What is the legal basis for the Trump administration's decision to impose and then remove tariffs?
Congress granted to the President authority to set tariffs by agreement with outher countries in the Reciprocal Tariff Act of 1934, and later extended such authority under various laws. The trump ...
- 2,621
10
votes
Can a President mandate Upvotes?
The president (or anyone) could request that Congress pass a law instructing Reddit to award each person on that page one upvote.
Either the House or Senate would have to mark up a bill, pass it ...
- 89.3k
10
votes
Are there plans to deal with "insurrection" of British monarchy?
First of all, the existence of any such plans would arguably constitute high treason against the monarch. In more practical terms, it would be regarded as a scandal by large segments of the press and ...
- 11.4k
9
votes
Has a court ever struck down an election result in the United States?
Yes, on multiple occasions.
This generally happens when ruling on the validity of votes during recounts. A good recent example of this is the 2016 Alaska Democratic Primary between Benjamin Nageak ...
9
votes
Accepted
How can the Judicial Branch enforce its orders?
Legal Authority
The All Writs Act is part of the statutory authorization for the civil contempt power as is 28 U.S.C. § 1826 (regarding compelling testimony from recalcitrant witnesses) and governing ...
- 73k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible