International Emergency Economic Powers Act
Overview of Emergency Legislation and Presidential Authority
The issue of executive discretion has been at the center of constitutional debates in liberal democracies throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Specifically, the question of how to balance a commitment to the rule of law with the exigencies of modern political and economic crises has been a consistent concern of legislators and scholars in the United States and around the world. The U.S. Constitution is silent on the question of how to handle emergencies. As such, over the past two centuries, Congress and the president have answered that question in varied and often ad hoc ways. In the 18th…
