Don Wolfensberger at The Hill:
Many executive orders in recent times were issued for national security reasons during wars or in the wake of terrorist attacks. They did not always sit well with the courts. Trump’s ordersare more scattershot and cover both domestic and foreign matters. Still, the flurry of executive orders that gushed from the White House during Trump’s first few weeks in office took almost everyone aback by their swift execution.
What is puzzling is that these orders were not accompanied by detailed statutory or constitutional justification as courts have insisted on in the past. You cannot fabricate an executive order out of whole cloth. You first need the cloth. Yet there is a simple justification upon which the administration is relying to avoid complex justifications rooted in law or the Constitution, and that is called the “unitary executive theory.” That theory holds that the president has absolute authority over the executive branch. As the president put it bluntly on social media last week, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”