This week’s form post has me evaluating Harvey Mansfield’s The Law and the President.

The
author puts forth the premise that in emergencies the President has the ability to set temporarily
aside the normal process of law and order must give way to necessity for the safety of the nation
and it’s people.

Claim: “To counter enemies, a republic must have and use force adequate to a greater threat than
comes from criminals, who may be quite patriotic if not public-spirited, and have nothing against
the law when applied to others besides themselves. But enemies, being extra-legal, need to be
faced with extra-legal force.” (Mansfield, 1)

Support: The author makes continual references to the Constitution yet never actually cites the
specific section that provides the powers. Additionally the author references the Federalist
Papers as a primary link to understand state of mind of those that wrote our constitution.
Mansfield does reference the oath of office in that the President elect swears to “execute the
office of the president.” (Mansfield, 1) This simple oath may be the portion that effectively
provides the President with the ability to act. The author also states that the Foreign Intelligence
Act is a judicial mistake in that judges appointed to the secret court must walk a very fine line
between consideration of fact and rapid, necessary action taken in the best interest of our
country.

Qualifiers: None were noted. As a professor of government at Harvard, I would have not
expected any.

Warrant: Mr. Mansfield’s writing style and logical thought process portrays a man very much
in support of the Office of the President and their ability to take rapid action when necessary.

Concession and Rebuttals: The closest the author gets to making concessionary statements is
when he’s discussing John McCain’s contrarian denouncement of torture yet recognizing that
“You need to do what you have to do.” (Mansfield, 2)

Mansfield, Harvey. "The Law and the President." The Weekly Standard, 16 Jan. 2006: 12-3.
ProQuest Research Library. Web. 8 Dec. 2011.

Looking at last week’s turnitin score, I had a 34% score so should probably work more on
paraphrasing but considering the very narrow scope of the paper and sources it would be tough to
do so.