Description

An American President faces war and finds himself hamstrung by a Congress that will not act. To protect national security, he invokes his powers as Commander-in-Chief and orders actions that seem to violate laws enacted by Congress. He is excoriated for usurping dictatorial powers, placing himself above the law, and threatening to “breakdown constitutional safeguards.”

One could be forgiven for thinking that the above describes former President George W. Bush. Yet these particular attacks on presidential power were leveled against Franklin D. Roosevelt. They could just as well describe similar attacks leveled against George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and a number of other presidents challenged with leading the nation through times of national crisis.

However bitter, complex, and urgent today’s controversies over executive power may be, John Yoo reminds us they are nothing new. In Crisis and Command, he explores a factor too little consulted in current debates: the past. Through shrewd and lucid analysis, he shows how the bold decisions made by Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR changed more than just history; they also transformed the role of the American president. The link between the vigorous exercise of executive power and presidential greatness, Yoo argues, is both significant and misunderstood. He makes the case that the founding fathers deliberately left the Constitution vague on the limits of presidential authority, drawing on history to demonstrate the benefi ts to the nation of a strong executive office.

About the Author

John Yoo is a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, where he has taught since 1993. From 2001-2003, he served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on issues involving foreign affairs, national security, and the separation of powers. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995-96, where he advised on constitutional issues and judicial nominations.

Professor Yoo received his B.A., summa cum laude, in American history from Harvard University and his J.D. from Yale Law School. He was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School in 2003 and at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1998. In 2006, Professor Yoo held the Distinguished Fulbright Chair in Law at the University of Trento (Italy).

Professor Yoo has published many articles on foreign affairs, national security, and constitutional law. He is the author of The Powers of War and Peace: Foreign Affairs and the Constitution after 9/11 (University of Chicago Press, 2005) and War by Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006). Crisis and Command completes his trilogy on the controversies provoked by the September 11th attacks of 2001.

Praise for Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush…

“…an eloquent, fact-laden history of audacious power grabs by American presidents going back to George Washington.” — Deborah Solomon, New York Times Magazine 

“…Yoo recognizes Madison's truth, for he acknowledges 'the importance of practice as a source of constitutional meaning,' and he devotes most of his book to analyzing presidential practice and the steady growth of presidential power over the course of American history.”  — The New Republic

“…Yoo’s robust view of presidential power is well-known, any history of the presidency written by him might initially seem suspect and agenda driven. He realizes only too well that his book is apt to be read “as a brief for the Bush administration’s exercise of executive authority in the war on terrorism.” But if it is a brief for an expansive understanding of presidential authority, it is a remarkably persuasive one.” —The National Interest 

“…Crisis and Command is a rich, subtle, and thoughtful work—one that will benefit those seeking to better understand the executive’s uneasy place in the constitutional order.” —Cambridge Review of International Affairs

""Those who know John Yoo only from the caricature painted by his critics will be gobsmacked to read Crisis and Command. It is not the work of some wild-eyed zealot bent on waging war on our civil liberties. Rather it is a careful, scholarly examination of the subject of presidential powers viewed through the prism of history. By focusing on how presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush have actually exercised their authority, especially in wartime, Yoo makes a compelling contribution to public understanding of this all-important topic. Far from a partisan polemic, it is a careful and measured work of scholarship that will have to be engaged by those on all sides of the issue."" —Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies, Council on Foreign Relations; author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power and War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today