Cass Sunstein

And the founders were very wary of that.

They wanted institutional judgments to outrun this week's judgment about particular people.

Under the Constitution, there's a question whether the president has emergency powers.

There's one that the president clearly has, which is to repel a sudden attack.

So Congress has the authority to declare war.

That's a precondition for war making.

If we are attacked, God forbid, today or about to be attacked, the president can act on an emergency basis.

That was described in the Constitutional Convention.

Whether the president has any other emergency powers under the Constitution is most unclear.

That's an unresolved question.

If there's some economic or health-related horror, does the president, by virtue of having the executive power, have authority to respond?

People dispute that.

The safest answer is rarely, if ever.

Then there are statutes that give the president some emergency authority to respond to crises so long as it's short term and so long as it's got a factual predicate.

There aren't a lot of those, but there are some in the domain of economics and health.

Fascists and communists often don't like separation of powers much because they think they need to respond quickly.

And while yours truly has no enthusiasm for fascism or communism, it's a point.

I had an acquaintance who was in Russia and had a meeting with President Putin.

And Putin's schedule was very crowded and he was late for the meeting.

And my friend said that she couldn't make the meeting because she had to fly back to the United States and Putin's meeting was too late.