This article examines George W. Bush’s unilateral presidential directives, including executive orders, proclamations, and executive memoranda. It seeks to ascertain whether his use of such directives was as radical as his critics claimed and whether it was in keeping with that of previous presidents or departed from established practices. I divide Bush’s more noteworthy directives into three categories (regular, rare, and remarkable), and I consider several directives within each category. I find that while some of Bush’s unilateral directives were radically new and controversial both politically and constitutionally, many of his directives were based on earlier presidents’ precedents.
This article explores the evolution of human understandings of putatively natural disasters in three respects. First, it contends that human conceptions of natural disasters have dramatically changed over time, from placing causality and responsibility with God and religion, to nature and science, to humanity and politics. Second, it tracks part of that broad development by examining how the legal category “Act of God” has become increasingly archaic and irrelevant in modern jurisprudence. Third, it outlines the implications of this development for more robust conceptions of human agency and politics, and it considers the causes of the changing conceptions of disaster.
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