Executive branch Quote by Garrett Epps

““Article II creates an office, President of the United States, that remains a kind of inkblot onto which generations of Americans have projected their hopes and fears. There is no Homeric catalogue of presidential powers; at the same time, there is no Levitical set of prohibitions. Article I names (and thus demands the existence of) officials from other branches—the vice president to preside, the chief justice to oversee presidential impeachment trials. Article I also dictates some officers and internal organization of the Houses of Congress—there will be a speaker for the House, a president pro tempore for the Senate. By contrast, Article II has nothing to say about the internal organization of the “executive branch”; it does not mention a Cabinet or any specific official below the president. Article I sets out a list of things that Congress may do and the states may not. Article II tells us nothing about the president’s relationship to the states; it is as if they are to be acquainted only through Congress. Article I tells us in detail what Congress may not do; Article II says almost nothing about what the president may not do. Article II tells us there will be a president, and it tells us (quite ineptly) how the president will be picked. But what exactly this president will do—and must not do—is left almost completely to the readers’ imagination.””

— Garrett Epps