Executive Power Without Legislative Authority

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 12, 1901

Executive Power Without Legislative Authority

The Philippine-American Civil Commission is framing statutes and making laws under the heading, “Be it enacted by the authority of the President of the United States.” And the president of the United States has no authority whatever to enact anything. The president of the United States is the executive, not the legislative, authority of the government of the United States. In the Philippines he has power to enact laws and whatever else he chooses, because he has an army of sixty thousand men there; but he has no authority to do it. And that is precisely the Roman system of government after the republic had failed.