executive order

executive order, principal mode of administrative action on the part of the president of the United States.

The executive order came into use before 1850, but the current numbering system goes back only to the administration of Pres. Abraham Lincoln. One of the earliest executive orders still in force (as amended) is Executive Order 9, issued January 17, 1873, by Pres. Ulysses S. Grant to curb abuses of power by individuals who concurrently held state and national political offices. It received considerable publicity when it was modified by Executive Order 4439 issued May 8, 1926, by Pres. Calvin Coolidge for the purpose of aiding Prohibition enforcement by allowing the same persons to be simultaneously state and federal enforcement officers. The president derives his authority to take administrative action by executive order either from the statutes of Congress or from his constitutional powers, including the general power of direction or overall management which flows from his implied constitutional position as the administrative superior of the heads of the executive departments of the national government and which finds its ultimate sanction in his power to remove those department heads.

The executive order stands in contrast to the proclamation, which, as a historic means of giving public notice of matters of widespread concern, antedates the presidency and which may or may not produce legal effects. The most famous presidential proclamation in U.S. history is the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by Pres. Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Executive orders as well as proclamations of the president are published in the Federal Register and are made the subjects of White House press releases.

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Among the most notable executive orders are Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 (February 19, 1942), which authorized the mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War II; Pres. Harry S. Truman’s Executive Order 9981, which abolished racial segregation in the U.S. military; and Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10730, which dispatched federal troops to protect the civil rights of the Little Rock Nine during the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School.

In form, executive orders are simpler than proclamations or memoranda, the president’s two other primary tools for administrative action. Its body, which usually has no “whereas” clauses, is followed in turn by the president’s signature, the words “The White House,” and the date expressed in a “month, day, year” format.