The same reason a commander in the field has to issue orders to enact a strategy that has already been developed by the top-brass.
Statute very rarely covers the day-to-day operations of things. It’s sort of analogous to a corporate policy, or corporate strategy even. Say corporation A is in the sensor market and wants its sales force to push the reliability of their sensors. This is a decision made at the top-level of corporation A, by the corporate officers. But the people actually responsible for training the sales force are not the corporate officers, they are mid-level managers. The people training the mid-level managers usually aren’t corporate officers, either.
Congress writes laws that it thinks wise but it has absolutely no means of enforcing them, the executive must issue orders to get things done. Furthermore even the most clearly and explicitly worded legislation requires some form of adaptation to the actual structure of the organization that will implement it, such that there needs to be someone making certain decisions about how that decision will be implemented.
For some things, direct action by the executive isn’t required, for others, it is.
Congress creates a new law that makes wearing purple on Thursday illegal, and gives the US Fish and Wildlife service the authority to investigate all suspected of Thursday purpling.
Enforcing (“executing”) the law is the job of the executive branch, so it is ultimately the President’s job to get this done. Fortunately, Congress has seen fit to make the President, by statute, the big boss of all the executive branch agencies (except those which Congress has said he is not the boss of.) He tells the Secretary of Agriculture to train all his senior staff on the subtle differences between purple, magenta, and violet. He tells the IRS to compile a list of all business concerns in the US suspected of manufacturing dreaded purple dye. And he tells the National Reconnaissance Office to use their spy satellites to spot incidents of Thursday purpling in the wild. All this information is to be handed over to the Special Joint Thursday Purpling Task Force run by the Fish and Wildlife Service which will then send a SWAT team armed with trout bait and bear traps to apprehend the offenders.
There is also another kind of executive order used in more specific circumstances. Congress creates a law which gives the President the authority to call up a vast gorilla army in the event of a banana shortage. When a banana shortage actually occurs, the President issues an order, citing the Gorilla Army Act of 1849 as his authority, to call up an army of Gorillas to find more bananas.
Finally, there are orders given to the military. There is a subtle difference here, in that the President’s authority over the military is derived from the Constitution, whereas his authority over most everything else is derived from federal statute.
Again, because he says that Congress doesn’t have the power to apply that particular law to the President, based on the President’s inherent Article II power.
Not saying that rationale is solid, but I am saying that it’s the rationlae he’s applying, as distinguised from “Any law I don’t like, I’ll ignore.”
A: The President could reasonably argue that a particular statute gives him the power to regulate what is, in fact, a dog or a cat, and
B: Fido works for the federal government and is subject to the President’s orders.
So we’re talking about the executive branch enforcing statutes that apply only to Government employees, the way a CEO enforces policies that apply only to his own employees? I was thinking that “statutes” meant any sort of statute at all. I was getting ready to go out for a night of gambling and sex for hire, and then when the police tried to take me in to the pokey I’d shout “Oh yeah? Where’s the executive order giving you the right to enforce statutes that make gambling and prostitution illegal!?” I’d probably be the lead story on Hard Copy.
When Nixon signed EO#11478 prohibiting certain kinds of discrimination against Federal workers, he was just enforcing an existing statute and not creating any new statute or policies? And when Clinton signed EO#13087 amending it to include sexual orientation, he was not amending the underlying statute but mearly enforcing an already amended one?
It is a rather vague order, isn’t it? I don’t know if it refers to any particular statute or just “the law” generally. I’m no expert on these matters, but I would presume that existing civil service laws give the President some latitude in regulating hiring, and this was a use of that latitude.
For an example of an EO which did try to create new statute, see EO 10340, wherein President Truman tries to nationalize the steel mills during the Korean War. The steel mills argued, and the Supreme Court agreed, that there was no Constitutional provision or statute which gave the President the power to seize still mills, and therefore the order was illegal, and the mills remained unseized.
So instead, the President annexes Austria by executive order, then retroactively offers natural born citizenship to all native sons of Austria. Sure, it invokes the ugly spectre of the Anschluss, but if it gives us another popular actor as President (especially one with such good taglines) it’ll be worth it, and besides, nobody really remembers history anyway.
Be nice to America or we’ll bring democracy to your country.