The 20th annual Symposium will be held on Thursday, April 23, 2009.

Theories of Executive Power
Norris 104, 9:00 AM

Elisabeth  Gusfa,   '09 60
   Major: Political Science
   Hometown: Grand Blanc, MI

Sponsor(s): William Rose, Andrew Grossman, Dyron Dabney
Support: FURSCA

Abstract: 
In the wake of 9/11, attention has been focused on the issue of how to balance liberty and national security interests. Although Article II of the Constitution states that the executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America, it does not precisely define that power. The omission of the Constitution’s limitations on the executive could imply the validity of arguments that support an expansive view of executive war powers.

How then, can the President exert expansive executive powers without violating civil liberties and thereby destroying the values for which democracies stand? The balancing approach would allow the courts to shift the emphasis placed on security and liberty as the security challenges change. However, the notion of balancing liberty and security interests leads to a zero-sum game in which more of one necessarily means less of the other. Instead of employing the balancing technique, I will argue that it is more useful to conceptualize liberty and security as existing on a continuum. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle emphasizes that it is crucial to achieve the mean between extremes of excess and deficiency. By striving to maintain Aristotle’s mean, there can never be a deficiency on either side of the spectrum due to the fact that achieving the mean implies that both liberty and security interests have been recognized. Thus, security and liberty need not be quantified and in turn, cannot fall privy to the zero-sum game.

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