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The Fettered Presidency: Legal Constraints On The Executive Branch

Edited by L. Gordon Crovitz and Jeremy A. Rabkin
Reviewed by By Lucy Despard
Summer 1989
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Edited by L. Gordon Crovitz and Jeremy A. Rabkin
American Enterprise Institute
1989
360 pp.
$29.95

Thirty-one papers and comments produced for an American Enterprise conference in 1988 and comprising a mutual concern over the perceived injuries to executive capacity at the hands of an unwieldy and irresponsible Congress. The dominant tone is one of regret that even the Reagan Administration-in which many of the contributors served (e.g., Weinberger, Sofaer, Perle, Kirkpatrick, Abrams)-finally fell "victim to the mysterious political curse that had brought down each of its predecessors of the two previous decades." Defenders of Congress will find here a rich compendium of the views of their opponents.

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