4
In this context, it makes sense that the events of 9/11 represent the type of crisis that past
presidents have used to exercise extraordinary unilateral power in the interest of allaying public
fear. Like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt before him, George W. Bush acted
decisively and with presidential energy to meet the calamity (e.g., Draper 2007). As historian
Geoffrey Stone (2007, 129) and others (Goldsmith 2007; Barber 2003; Sparks 2003; Cole and
Dempsey 2002) observe, President Bush based his domestic and foreign antiterrorist policies on
fear and the uncertainty of a threat that are both indefinite in scope and duration. While the
strategy allowed the president to act more quickly than Congress or the courts in confronting
terrorism (Stone 2007, 130), it also enabled him to accrue a wide range of unprecedented
constitutional authority that, for some (Nather 2007), has neutralized any meaningful checks
against the White House fighting an undeclared “war” on terror. Louis Fisher (2007, 1) asserts
that George W. Bush’s expansion of Article II national security powers is unmatched by any
other president in terms of frequency and breadth. As such, Bush has utilized his presidential
prerogatives to create military commissions, authorize extraordinary renditions, conduct harsh (if
not tortuous) interrogations, and initiate warrantless electronic wiretapping of U.S. citizens
through the National Security Agency (NSA) (Fisher 2007, 12). Still, the precise use and impact
of the USA PATRIOT Act in regards to the operation of the unilateral presidency remains
unclear.
In order to assess the scope and impact of the Bush administration’s unilateral presidency
after 9/11, the political and legal justifications underlying the president’s antiterrorism policies
and the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 must first be outlined. While the USA PATRIOT Act is a
core element of the administration’s anti-terror political strategy, it is best understood as part of a
larger struggle to amass presidential power through the development of legal policymaking
Convention