Listen while Michael McConnell discusses immigration.

Senior Fellow Michael McConnell discusses the constitutionality of President Obama’s recent executive action order on immigration.

On November 20, 2014, President Obama issued a series of memoranda to the cabinet secretaries responsible for overseeing the nation’s immigration system. The actions were expressly not changes in law, although the president proclaimed he had taken actions affecting naturalization, deferred action, parole-in-place, and border security.

President Obama is not the first President to use his executive power aggressively. President Lincoln used an Executive Order in 1861 to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. The Supreme Court held that his action was unconstitutional. President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to change the composition of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1937 in order to gain favorable votes for his New Deal legislation.