Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-58_i425.pdf
Page Number: 67

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

25 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

What  the  majority  has  done  is  to  apply  Oliver  Wendell
Holmes’s  bad-man  theory  of  the  law  to  the  separation  of 
powers.  Under Holmes’s theory, as popularly understood, 
the law consists of those things that a bad man cannot get 
away with.10  Similarly, the majority’s understanding of the
“executive Power” seems to be that a President can disobey 
statutory  commands  unless  Congress,  by  flexing  its  mus-
cles, forces capitulation.  That is not the Constitution’s con-
ception of “the executive Power.”  Art. II, §1.  The Constitu-
tion,  instead,  requires  a  President  to  “take  Care  that  the 
Laws be faithfully executed.”  §3 (emphasis added). 

Neither the Solicitor General nor the majority has cited 
any  support  for  the  proposition  that  a  President  has  the 
power to disobey statutes that require him to take enforce-
ment actions, and there is strong historical evidence to the 
contrary.11    The  majority’s  conception  of  Presidential  au-
thority  smacks  of  the  powers  that  English  monarchs 
claimed prior to the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, namely, 
the power to suspend the operation of existing statutes, and 
to grant dispensations from compliance with statutes.12  Af-
ter James II was deposed, that changed.  The English Bill 
of  Rights  of  1689  emphatically  rejected  “the  pretended 
Power of Suspending of Laws or the Execution of Laws by 
Rega[l]  Authority  without  Consent  of  Parl[i]ament”  and 

—————— 

10 See O. Holmes, The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 457, 459–460 

(1897). 

11 See Z. Price, Enforcement Discretion and Executive Duty, 67 Vand. 
L. Rev.  671,  689–696  (2014);  R.  Delahunty  &  J.  Yoo,  Dream  On:  The 
Obama  Administration’s  Nonenforcement  of  Immigration  Laws,  the
DREAM Act, and the Take Care Clause, 91 Texas L. Rev. 781, 797–804 
(2013) (Delahunty & Yoo, Dream On); see also E. Biber, Two Sides of the 
Same Coin: Judicial Review of Administrative Agency Action and Inac-
tion, 26 Va. Env. L. J. 461, 472–474 (2008). 

12 See R. Reinstein, The Limits of Executive Power, 59 Am. U. L. Rev. 

259, 277–281 (2009) (Reinstein, Limits).