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it: "In our view, this clause constitutes a grant of all the executive powers of which the
Government is capable." If that be true, it is difficult to see why the forefathers bothered to add
several specific items, including some trifling ones.
The example of such unlimited executive power that must have most impressed the
forefathers was the prerogative exercised by George III, and the description of its evils in the
Declaration of Independence leads me to doubt that they were creating their new Executive in his
image. Continental European examples were no more appealing. And if we seek instruction from
our own times, we can match it only from the executive powers in those governments we
disparagingly describe as totalitarian. I cannot accept the view that this clause is a grant in bulk
of all conceivable executive power but regard it as an allocation to the presidential office of the
generic powers thereafter stated. [Ibid. at 63941.]
There are indications that the Constitution did not contemplate that the title Commander
in Chief of the Army and Navy will constitute him also Commander in Chief of the country, its
industries and its inhabitants. He has no monopoly of "war powers," whatever they are. While
Congress cannot deprive the President of the command of the army and navy, only Congress can
provide him an army or navy to command. It is also empowered to make rules for the
"Government and Regulation of land and naval Forces," by which it may to some unknown
extent impinge upon even command functions.
That military powers of the Commander in Chief were not to supersede representative
government of internal affairs seems obvious from the Constitution and from elementary
American history. Time out of mind, and even now in many parts of the world, a military