@article{Christenson:2015d,
author = {Christenson, Dino P. and Douglas L. Kriner}, 
title = {Political Constraints on Unilateral Executive Action},
volume = {65}, 
number = {4}, 
pages = {897-931}, 
year = {2015}, 
OPTdoi = {}, 
abstract ={Pundits, politicians, and scholars  alike have decried the dramatic  expansion of presidential unilateral power in recent decades. Such  brazen assertions, against which Congress and the courts have offered  seemingly feckless resistance, have led many to decry the emergence of  a new “imperial presidency.” From a political science perspective,  however, perhaps the more puzzling question is the relative  paucity , not  the proliferation of unilateral actions. Why do presidents not act  unilaterally to bring an even wider  range of policies into closer alignment with their preferences? The dominant paradigm in political science scholarship emphasizes Congress ’s institutional weakness when  confronting the unilateral president.  It correctly notes that presidents,  in all but the rarest of circumstances, can act with impunity, secure in  the knowledge that legislative efforts  to undo their unilateral initiatives  will fail. However, much scholarship overlooks the critical importance  of political costs in constraining the unilateral president, and how other  institutions—even when they cannot  legally compel the president to  change course—can affect presidential  strategic calculations by raising  these costs. We illustrate our argument with a pair of case studies:  President Obama’s halting unilateral policy response to the  immigration crisis, and his abrupt about-face on unilateral action  against the Assad regime in Syria.  In these cases, we argue that  calculations about the informal political costs of unilateral action  affected both the timing and content of presidential policy decisions.  When contemplating unilateral action, presidents anticipate more than  whether they can defeat legislative  efforts to overturn their unilateral  initiatives. They also consider the political costs of acting unilaterally  and weigh them against the benefits of doing so. Paying greater attention to these political constraints on unilateral action affords a more accurate picture of the place of the unilateral presidency within our separation of powers system in the contemporary era.}, 
OPTURL = {}, 
OPTeprint = {}, 
journal = {Case Western Law Review} 
}