ABSTRACT
The first real threat to the constitutional integrity of the system, the first serious act of constitutional violence, was Harry Truman's claim that he had plenary constitutional authority—without Congress—to lead the nation into war. The most serious threat to constitutional integrity came in the weeks after the 9/11 attack against the United States. The initial optimism in the war against terror was based on the speed with which the United States and a large coalition of other nations seemed to defeat the Taliban government in Afghanistan. The unitary executive is a model of presidential power that posits that "all" executive powers belong exclusively to the president. The modern academic cache for the unitary executive grew primarily out of several law journal articles touting a new, originalist construction of the robust version of president power. The George W. Bush administration took the unitary executive further than its predecessors, claiming that in war, the president's actions are "nonreviewable".
