# The President is essentially above the law

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-president-is-essentially-above-the-law/840516>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [September 19, 2019, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-president-is-essentially-above-the-law/840516 "2019-09-19T18:40:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![str8cashhomie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7cd45c/32.png) [@str8cashhomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/str8cashhomie)\
**Post date:** [September 24, 2019, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-president-is-essentially-above-the-law/840516/41 "2019-09-24T01:38:41Z")

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> [@doreen](#):
>
> I’m not sure what you mean by " law enforcement activities outside of the executive branch are marginalized" ( I’m not actually sure there are any law enforcement activities outside of the executive branch to begin with) , but in any event , what “unitary executive” means is that executive power is vested in a single office (president, governor etc ). Whether it’s strongly or weakly unitary, it’s the opposite of a plural executive system, where other executives are independently elected - such as states where the AG, controller, Secretary of State , etc are elected rather than appointed by the governor. The thing is, though, you could still end up with a president who’s essentially above the law- because even though a president couldn’t fire an independently elected AG , he or she would still act in a way that wouldn’t harm the chances of re-election.

Sorry to be unclear. The main thing I mean is giving more law enforcement powers to congress and the marshalls which I believe act independently of the DOJ (but I could be wrong/have an incomplete understanding of that).

I think the state vs. federal thing is tough, because a single state arresting high-ranking federal officials would get hairy pretty quick.

I personally think the pluralistic executive branch, where different officials are elected separately could easily lead to more brinkmanship in US politics as you say. Additionally, under “normal circumstances” it would undermine some things I like about our system. For example I think the presidential veto makes a lot of sense because it avoids cases where a bill narrowly passes congress and the president doesn’t like it and will undermine it at every turn. Vetoes mitigate the problem of having laws that are backed up by so much uncertain enforcement that no one knows what the de facto law really is. I realize the irony of saying this when it happens so frequently in our system, but personally I think it would get even worse in the case where some officials had a ton of executive power without any say in legislation.

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