- the Congress creates the laws
- the Supreme Court verifies the laws
- the President enforces the laws.
The oath of office a president swears is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States". Accordingly, the president is responsible for implementing and enforcing the laws.
Recently, we have observed several situations where the president has chosen to disregard certain laws, indicating that the office of the president will not enforce them. Clearly, this is a choice to disregard an oath. Given that this is politics, it may be redundant to point out that it is unethical.
However, I'm curious how we understand the constitutional nature of this behavior. If the enforcer of the laws does not enforce the laws and disregards the constitution, who is to hold the enforcer responsible for not enforcing?
A few of the specific examples are
- Defense of Marriage (DOMA) early in his presidency.
- Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obama Care) in indicating that certain requirements would not be enforced in the timing indicated in the law
- Affirmative Action, specifically in college admissions.
The last is the most startling to me. President Obama has directed colleges to ignore the Supreme Court ruling, directing colleges to continue enforcing affirmative actions despite the fact that the Supreme Court ruled to the contrary.
We pride ourselves on abiding by the rule of law. Certainly this is tenuous when the primary rulers and purveyors of Law disregard the guidelines of the Constitution.
