Each year billions of dollars are diverted by the President and his assistants from the purposes for which Congress intended them. Billions more are used in confidential and covert ways, without the knowledge of Congress and the public. Here is the first account of how this money is actually spent.Louis Fisher writes: "When it comes to the administration of the budget, we find nothing that is obvious, very little that is visible. Our priorities here are peculiar. We fix upon the appropriations process, watching with great fascination as Congress goes about its business of making funds available to agencies. What happens after that point ―the actual spending of money―rarely commands our attention."To unravel the mystery, Louis Fisher has investigated different forms of discretionary action: the transfer of funds that initially financed the Cambodian incursion; impoundment during the Nixon administration; covert financing; the reprogramming of funds; and unauthorized commitments. He describes each of these devices in operation and provides the historical background of Presidential spending power. In conclusion Louis Fisher presents a cogent and timely analysis of what can be done to improve Congressional control. Sufficient control, he maintains, cannot be achieved merely through the appropriations process, and he makes important recommendations designed to preserve discretionary authority while improving Congressional supervision.Originally published in 1975.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This text dissects the crucial constitutional disputes between the executive and the legislative branches of government from the Constitutional Convention to the beginning of the Bush administration. It analyzes areas of tension within a political and historical context.

Product Description: "On the Supreme Court" places the Supreme Court in a rich historical and political context, demonstrating how its interpretations of statutes and the Constitution are necessarily shared with the elected branches, the 50 states, and the general public...read more

Product Description: "On the Supreme Court" places the Supreme Court in a rich historical and political context, demonstrating how its interpretations of statutes and the Constitution are necessarily shared with the elected branches, the 50 states, and the general public...read more

Product Description: A classic and bestselling work by one of America's top Constitutional scholars, Presidential War Power garnered the lead review in the New York Times Book Review and raised essential issues that have only become more timely, relevant, and controversial in our post-9/11 era...read more

This basic text for courses in American Constitutional law contains texts, readings, documents and cases. The author's intent has been to go beyond the analysis of court cases and to analyze the political, historical and social framework in which decisions are handed down.

Product Description: Focuses on the Supreme Court's role in American politics. Using a wide selection of primary source materials, this title examines the Court's impact on different groups, agencies, and public policies as well as on public philosophies about the appropriate dimensions of judicial powe...read more

This book explains why Congress is the indispensable institution for safeguarding popular, democratic, and constitutional government. Even though its record over the past two centuries presents a mixed picture, the record of the other two branches is also decidedly mixed. The author has worked for Congress for the past four decades and writes from a perspective that intimately understands its shortcomings while appreciating its strengths. He contends that portraying Congress as so inherently inept that it must be kept subordinate to presidential or judicial power is misguided and uninformed. The Constitution looks to Congress as the first branch because it is the institution through which citizens at the local and state level engage in self-government. Although Presidents claim to be the “national representative,” they cannot substitute for the knowledge and legitimacy brought by members of Congress. Congress, after all, is “the people’s branch” and this book restores it to its rightful claim.

The author assesses the longstanding tension between protecting constitutional rights and safeguarding national security in a study that focuses on how the Bush administration's responses to 9/11 have threatened the Constitution and the rights it protects. Simultaneous.

Product Description: Nearly three decades after its initial publication, Louis Fisher's durable classic remains at the head of its class-a book that Congressional Quarterly called "as close to being indispensable as anything published in this field." This newly revised and updated fifth edition emphatically reinforces that sterling reputation...read more

Product Description: This paperback volume (subtitled ''Constitutional Structures: Separated Powers and Federalism'') includes chapters 1 through 9 of Fisher/Harriger, American Constitutional Law, Ninth Edition (hardback) plus the concluding chapter, ''Efforts to Curb the Court...read more

Product Description: Book by Elsea, Jennifer, Fisher, Louis

Although huge in scope and impact, the 9/11 attacks were not the first threat by foreign terrorists on American soil. During World War II, eight Germans landed on our shores in 1942 bent on sabotage. Caught before they could carry out their missions, under FDR's presidential proclamation they were hauled before a secret military tribunal and found guilty. Meeting in an emergency session, the Supreme Court upheld the tribunal's authority. Justice was swift: six of the men were put to death—a sentence much more harsh than would have been allowed in a civil trial.Louis Fisher chronicles the capture, trial, and punishment of the Nazi saboteurs in order to examine the extent to which procedural rights are suspended in time of war. One of America's leading constitutional scholars, Fisher analyzes the political, legal, and administrative context of the Supreme Court decision Ex parte Quirin (1942). He reconstructs a rush to judgment that has striking relevance to current events by considering the reach of the law in trials conducted against wartime enemies.Fisher contends that, although the Germans did not have a constitutional right to a civil trial, the tribunal represented an ill-conceived concentration of power within the presidency, supplanting essential checks from the judiciary, Congress, and the office of the Judge Advocate General. He also reveals that the trials were conducted in secret not to preserve national security but rather to shield the government's chief investigators and sentencing decisions from public scrutiny and criticism. Thus, the FBI's bogus claim to have nabbed the saboteurs entirely on their own was allowed to stand, while the saboteurs' death sentences were initially kept hidden from public view. Fisher provides an inside look at the judicial deliberations, drawing on the 3,000-page tribunal transcript, Supreme Court records, and the private papers of the justices and executive officials involved. He analyzes the deep disagreements within the Roosevelt administration, leading to a conclusion in 1945 that the process used against the eight Germans had been defective and, thus, that an entirely different procedure was needed to prosecute two later German saboteurs. Nazi Saboteurs on Trial also reveals just how poorly the justices resisted wartime pressures and how badly they failed to protect procedural rights. Although Ex parte Quirin is cited as an "apt precedent" by the Bush administration for the trying of suspected al Qaeda terrorists, Fisher concludes that the 1942 decision was, in the words of Justice Felix Frankfurter, "not a happy precedent." His book provides a sober cautionary tale for our current effort to balance individual rights and national security.