Anti-Federalism and Presidential Power

• In Event: Executive Politics and Popular Leadership

Abstract

The growth and expansion of presidential power (especially unilateral power) is often taken for granted as an inevitable byproduct of the modern era. However, one group foresaw the potential for sprawling presidential authority from the nation’s earliest days: the Anti-Federalists. This paper will analyze the Anti-Federalists’ arguments about presidential power and assess the extent to which they predicted many of the problems we now face today, especially in areas such as war powers and unilateral executive actions more generally. As such, this paper argues that the seeds of the dangerous rise in presidential power were sown in the constitutional design.

Author

• William D. Adler, Northeastern Illinois University