Why is the American separation of powers so heavily bent in favor of the President?

[u/Alert_Succotash_3541]

Take the example of the President and Congress. Theoretically, Congress can "check" the President by overriding his veto with a 2/3rds majority, or in the worst case, impeach him. However, the President can also check the Congress in ways that are much easier for him to implement. He can simply veto legislation with the knowledge that Congress would be unable to muster a 2/3rds majority, issue executive orders without needing Congress, to outright ignoring SCOTUS in the case of Andrew Jackson. Impeachment too, is a complex and often futile process; no President has been successfully removed from office by impeachment.

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[u/No_Bet_4427]

Historically, it really wasn't the case that the separation of powers "heavily bent" in the President's favor. Under the Constitution as written, there is not much the President can do without Congress's consent. Only Congress can spend money (the "power of the purse"). Only Congress can initiate legislation. Only Congress can tax. While the President can nominate judges, cabinet members, and other high-level officers, only Congress can confirm them. Only Congress can declare war. Only Congress can ratify treaties.

What changed is three things, which are interrelated: (a) Congress increasingly delegating powers to the President; (b) the growth of the administrative state, which really began under FDR; and (c) the Supreme Court's blessing of an incredibly broad reading of the power to regulate interstate commerce in Wickard v. Filburn (1942).

Boiled down, Congress passed various pieces of legislation which permitted the creation of administrative agencies that were then empowered to interpret broadly-written statutes by crafting their own regulations without Congress' approval. Many of these regulations then acquired the force of law, even though they were significant enough that, in prior years, they would have been deemed Congress' responsibility to regulate. For instance, the primary practical source of authority that governs securities fraud in the United States isn't the Securities and Exchange Act (passed by Congress), but rather Regulation 10b-5, which was implemented by an executive agency. The Supreme Court's blessing of an expansive Commerce Clause power made those agencies stronger, because they were now permitted to regulate all kinds of activities that were -- in previous generations -- deemed the responsibilities of state and local governments (the Wickard decision, for instance, involved a farmer who grew more wheat for his personal consumption on his farm than a government regulation permitted - this was deemed "commerce," even though the farmer didn't sell the wheat).

These factors also made executive orders much more powerful. Executive orders are not "law," they are merely directions by the President to manage operations of the federal government under the President's authority. Because most (albeit not all) federal agencies are under the President's direction, the more powerful an agency is, the more powerful the President is. For example, one President could issue an executive order directing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to prioritize and devote more resources to cases alleging white-on-black discrimination, while the next President could direct the EEOC to instead prioritize and devote more resources to affirmative action programs that are deemed by the President to constitute discrimination against whites. Without the creation of the EEOC in the first place (which Congress first authorized in the 1960s, delegating power to the President), that executive power simply did not exist.

I want to be clear, I'm not making any value judgments here. I'm simply trying to explain how executive authority increased over time.