… The administration’s unilateral moves on a range of issues from changing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, to liberalizing the enforcement of immigration policy, to ordering unilateral airstrikes against Libya have produced fiery denunciations from politicians and pundits alike. While they may huff and puff, both Congress and the Courts often appear largely unable to prevent or overturn high profile executive actions (recent judicial challenges to Obama, notwithstanding). …
But do Americans instinctively oppose unilateral action? …
Instead of automatically recoiling against unilateral action as a threat to our constitutional system of checks and balances, we find that most Americans evaluate unilateral action through the same partisan cues and policy preferences that they use to make other political judgments. CONT.
Dino P. Christenson & Douglas Kriner (Boston U.), USApp