Shines a light on the constitutional issues that confronted and shaped each presidency from George Washington to the Progressive Era Drawing from the monumental The Presidents and the Constitution: A Living History, published in 2016, the nation's foremost experts in the American presidency and the US Constitution join together to tell the intertwined stories of how the first twenty-seven distinctive American presidents have confronted and shaped the Constitution and thus defined the most powerful office in human history. From George Washington to William Howard Taft, The Presidents and the Constitution, Volume 1 illuminates the evolving American presidency in a unique way-through the lens of the Constitution itself. Arranged chronologically by president, the book examines the constitutional issues confronting each president in the context of the personalities driving historical events.The contributors illustrate the extensive powers of the American presidency in domestic and foreign affairs, showing how they have been used by the men who were granted them, and brings to light the overarching constitutional themes that span this country's history and tie each presidency to the other branches of government.
Ken Gormley is President and Professor of Law at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He is the award-winning author of the New York Times best seller The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr, and Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation.
"Ken Gormley has connected the Constitutional dots brilliantly, demonstrating the immense concentration of power in the chief executive and the different, often contradictory, ways it has been used or misused. The book is a class in Constitutional Law all by itself. In several crucial ways this is what the 2016 race for the White House was about-who has precisely what power, who shares it, how is it going to be exercised, and what, if any, are its limits." -- Bob Woodward, Associate Editor, the Washington Post "Gormley and his impressive roster of collaborators have abundantly delivered on the promise of this book's title. The balance between presidential power and presidential accountability is indeed a living history . . . Puts present-day controversies in context and shows how living history isn't about legal abstractions-it is about ambition, conflict, and the consequences and limits of presidential power." -- John Harris, Politico "Everything you ever wanted to know about the Supreme Court and the Presidency but were afraid to ask." -- Nina Totenberg, correspondent for NPR
