Article I of the Constitution of the United States is clear and straightforward: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

Article II is also clear: “[The President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed…”

The role of the President of the United States is to faithfully administer the government, in service of the People, in keeping with the Constitution and the law. The President has no legislative authority.

The President’s authority is further constrained by Article III, which vests all judicial authority “in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

And, we urge all public authorities to recall that the Bill of Rights and subsequent Amendments establish clear and irreducible protections of universal rights and set the standard that rights have primacy over power.

Powers must be assigned by law, and no action violating the terms of the Constitution or other federal laws, can be lawful—as Articles I, II, and III make clear. The Ninth Amendment, however, holds that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Rights have primacy over power.

The First Amendment also carves out near unbounded protection of civil liberties: All persons under the jurisdiction of the United States enjoy freedom of speech, freedom of the press (and so the right to open access to information and evidence), freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and the right to seek redress for grievances through legal process.

Importantly, the First Amendment makes it unlawful for the government to abridge or reduce any of these rights. We recognize that the words “Congress shall make no law…” mean that no Executive action serving the prohibited ends can be lawful, and no Judicial ruling should pretend otherwise.

We will detail elsewhere the great empowerment provided by the Bill of Rights to individual citizens and groups of citizens to provide advice and consent to all three branches of government. Here, our purpose is to clarify that the President of the United States cannot unilaterally deprive anyone of life, liberty, or property, or ignore their transcendent human rights, regardless of the claims made to justify such actions.

It is also the sense of the faithful citizen that the President does not have exclusive or unilateral authority over the actions of the Executive branch. While the office serves as the formal head of the Executive branch, all actions taken through the powers of the office must correspond to written laws that are consistent with the Constitution and the protection of all rights.

The language of Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution makes clear: Congress has a material role in determining who fills what positions: “Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.”

What this means for the hiring and firing of federal personnel is that where Congress has vested authority in federal agencies to hire and fire their own personnel, that is the legal standard. The President has no authority to interfere with or to ignore that standard. Though the highest ranking administrator, the President is not the sole administrator and cannot wield dictatorial authority over the Executive branch.

Furthermore, since the President has no authority to act outside the limits of existing law, no order that seeks to compel others to do so can be lawful. No federal worker has any lawful authority to act on an order that would cause them to violate the law.

The President of the United States is an administrator and a public servant, not a ruler and not a monarch.

This goes to the heart of the purpose of this publication: Executive orders that seek to expand the President’s lawful authority, without explicit support from acts of Congress passed into law, do not have legislative weight. If they make lawful recommendations for the conduct of government business, then they have administrative weight; if they make unlawful recommendations, they do not.