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The Constitutional Significance of the Executive Office of the President

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Clinton L. Rossiter
Clinton L. Rossiter
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

The Executive Office of the President of the United States was established in the summer of 1939 through the associated, if not wholly harmonious, endeavors of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Seventy-sixth Congress. The Reorganization Act of April 3, Reorganization Plans No. 1 of April 25 and No. 2 of May 9, and the Joint Resolution of June 7, were the principal stages in a labyrinthine course of policy-formulation that culminated September 8, 1939, in the issuance of the celebrated Executive Order 8248. Today, ten years later, it is virtually impossible to conceive of the Presidency without the Executive Office, so essential has this nexus of administrative machinery become to its proper functioning. The end of a decade of unparalleled presidential activity would seem a proper season to take stock of the Executive Office of the President: to recall the reasons for its creation, total up the many additions and subtractions that have followed in bewildering and not always purposeful profusion, sketch its present composition, and, most important, call attention to its waxing significance as a key institution in the American system of government.

Type
American Government and Politics
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 43 , Issue 6 , December 1949 , pp. 1206 - 1217
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1949

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References

1 The citations for these are, respectively, 53 Stat. 561, 1423, 1431, 813; 4 F.R. 3864.

2 Under authorization of the First Deficiency Appropriation Act, 1936 (49 Stat. 1600). For the history and reports of this committee, see generally Graves, W. B., Basic Information on the Reorganization of the Executive Branch (Washington, 1949), especially pp. 129–204Google Scholar. Mr. Graves has done us a real service in the compilation and publication of the material in this volume.

3 President's Committee on Administrative Management, Report of the President's Committee (Washington, 1937), p. ivGoogle Scholar.

4 Gulick, Luther, “The Executive Office of the President: A Symposium,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 1 (1941), pp. 101–140Google Scholar. No student of the Executive Office should miss this authoritative symposium by Messrs. Brownlow, H. D. Smith, Merriam, Mc-Reynolds, Millett, and Gulick.

5 White, L. D., Introduction to the Study of Public Administration (3rd ed., New York, 1948), p. 52Google Scholar.

6 57 Stat. 170.

7 This, I think, is an unfortunate state of affairs. See Rossiter, C. L., Constitutional Dictatorship (Princeton, 1948), p. 311Google Scholar.

8 60 Stat. 24.

9 61 Stat. 496, 497, 499.

10 For the appointments of Steelman, and Clifford, , see New York Times, Dec. 13, 1946Google Scholar, and June 28, 1946, respectively.

11 See generally its first report, General Management of the Executive Branch, 81st Cong., 1st Sess., House Doc. No. 55.

12 This proposal was embodied in President Truman's Reorganization Plan No. 4, presented to Congress June 20, 1949, and is now law. See Daily Cong. Rec., pp. 8127–8128.

13 See, for example, Pearson, N. M., “A General Administrative Staff to Aid the President,” Public Admin. Review, Vol. 4 (1944), p. 127CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Graves, op. cit., pp. 133–134.

15 See the thoughtful articles of Macmahon, Arthur W., “The Future Organizational Pattern of the Executive Branch,” in this Review, Vol. 38 (1944), p. 1179Google Scholar, and Wayne Coy, “Federal Executive Reorganization Re-examined; Basic Problems,” ibid., Vol. 40 (1946), p. 1124.

16 General Management of the Executive Branch, p. 21.

17 The President's Committee on Administrative Management, quoted in Graves, op. cit., p. 137.

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