A great piece from Domain today.
Presidential emergency powers are broader, kicking in once an “emergency” is declared. What that might be, though, falls under a wide scope. “By definition, an emergency is something you really can’t pin down and define in advance,” says Tribe, an emeritus professor of constitutional law at Harvard University. Hence, George W. Bush used emergency powers to put Americans under surveillance after 9/11. Bill Clinton declared a national emergency during the 1996 Cuba embargo to prevent US ships or aircraft from entering Cuban territory without authorisation. Barack Obama declared a national emergency in 2009 to activate disaster plans during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic.
In total, US presidents have declared 82 emergencies. Curiously, many of those that first appeared to be short-term “emergencies” are still ongoing, including the freezing of Iranian assets in relation to the 1979 hostage crisis. (The National Emergencies Act of 1976 stipulated that emergency declarations automatically expired after one year, but presidents can renew them again and again.)
