Washington's Right-Hand Man

While Americans admire George Washington for the dignity and restraint he exercised as the young republic’s first president, Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s former aide-de-camp and first secretary of the treasury, is often remembered for his advocacy of a strong and energetic national executive. Although Hamilton’s contemporary detractors accused him of undermining America’s experiment in government with the taint of monarchy, Hamilton consistently touted what he considered to be the many benefits of a “vigorous Executive” before, as well as during, his tenure in Washington’s cabinet. While our founding statesmen disagreed about the might of the executive branch, the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1788, provided a blueprint for executive power.

Understanding the constitutional foundations of executive power begins with a close reading of Article II, the framework for the executive branch. In contrast to Article I, which describes Congress and the nature of legislative power across 10 sections of text, Article II contains only four sections. Yet length is deceiving here—whereas Congress’s legislative powers are specifically limited to only those “herein granted” (Article I, section 1), all of the powers inherently executive in nature are vested in the executive branch through Article II. In other words, because the Constitution comprehensively grants that “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America” (Article II, section 1), the president is empowered with any and all powers considered to be executive in nature (subject only to the few qualifications and limitations further stipulated in the text). This amounts to an expansive constitutional foundation for a robust, Hamiltonian conception of executive power.

Although Article II broadly grants power to the executive, it does not always provide direct answers to the practical questions put to it. As treasury secretary, Hamilton regularly encountered one of the trickiest, and most frequently occurring, questions about executive power to arise in a republic bound by the rule of law: To what extent does the executive have discretionary authority to unilaterally interpret and execute the law?

Executive discretion smacked of monarchy, as this authority to interpret statutory or constitutional law harkened back to the British king’s prerogative powers. By virtue of his divine right, and later, his constitutional standing, the British monarch enjoyed enormous discretion to intervene in the legislative process, to bestow privileges and titles, and to execute and adjudge the laws of the land through his appointed magistrates. That the framers of the Constitution gave the president a qualified veto and the power to pardon indicates that they found some elements of the king’s prerogative to be essential for their constitutional republic. Still, the extent of the president’s inherited prerogative—his discretionary powers—remained a controversial question during the first decades of the American republic. Washington was keenly aware of the contentious nature of his presidential prerogatives and proceeded cautiously when he considered exercising them.