248 WRIGHT— POWER TO MEET RESPONSIBILITIES. 



" The true view of the Executive functions is," says President Taft, " as 

 I conceive it, that the President can exercise no power which cannot be 

 fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power or justly implied 

 and included within such express grant as proper and necessary to its exer- 

 cise. Such specific grant must be either in the Federal Constitution or in an 

 act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum 

 of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be of public in- 

 terest, and there is nothing in the Neagle case and its definition of a law of 

 the United States, or in other precedents, warranting such an inference." 



Later President Taft attacks the Roosevelt doctrine on practical 

 grounds : 



" My judgment is that the view of Mr. Garfield and Mr. Roosevelt ascrib- 

 ing an undefined residuum of power to the President is an unsafe doctrine 

 and that it might lead under emergencies to results of an arbitrary character, 

 doing irremediable injustice to private right. The mainspring of such a view 

 is that the Executive is charged with responsibility for the welfare of all 

 people in a general way, that he is to play the part of a Universal Providence 

 and set all things right and that anything that in his judgment will help the 

 people, he ought to do, unless he is expressly forbidden not to do it. The 

 wide field of action that this would give to the Executive one can hardly 

 :iimit." 22 



^g^. President's Duty to Execute the Laws. 



The responsibility of the President to " take care that the laws be 

 faithfully executed " was held in the Neagle case^^ to confer power 

 upon the President to authorize an individual to employ force for 

 the protection of a federal justice. Here again we seem to find 

 power derived from responsibility. If this doctrine were carried out 

 and as the court said in this case, the term " laws " includes not 

 only acts of congress and treaties but also "the rights, duties and 

 obligations growing out of . . . international relations," a most in- 

 admissible result would be reached. The President would be found 

 to have power to declare war, pay out money, reduce the military 

 establishment and perform all other acts necessary to meet interna- 

 tional responsibilities. We must agree with Willoughby-'* that the 

 doctrine of the Neagle case is " justified only in exceptional circum- 



22 Taft, op. cit., pp. 140, 144. See. also Senatorial debate of 1831, quoted 

 Corwin, op. cit., p. 59. 



23 7;^ re Neagle, 135 U. S. i. 



24 Willoughby, op. cit., pp. 1155. But see Goodnow, op. cit., pp. 47, 75, 

 and Hamilton, quoted Corwin, op. cit., p. 15. 



