Richard Epstein on Executive Power in the Wall Street Journal

On one side, a unitary executive allows the president to carry out the laws with speed and dispatch. But the Founders also checked executive power because of their deep fear of the dangers that a standing army posed to the safety and security of the nation. Nothing in Article II gives the president an exclusive control over national security issues, nor reduces Congress to a mere spectator on the grand events of the day. The Congress makes the rules; the president carries them out. That was the formula of 1787. It is the formula of 2006.

--Richard Epstein, Wall Street Journal, March 1st.