Executive Prerogative Past and Present: Presidential Power from President Lincoln to President Trump

Attorneys should attend this program to learn how to assess the shifting boundaries of the executive branch's prerogative power as presidents exercise legislative and judicial authority through various means, including executive orders, proclamations, memoranda, executive agreements, signing statements, pardons, vetoes, and national security directives.

Attendees will learn how to classify and assess the Constitutionality of executive privilege by past, present, and future presidential administrations. Historical antecedents, along with recent executive actions and resulting litigation, will provide the primary basis for the analysis.

Attorneys with any level of experience seeking to better understand whether executive prerogative power and “presidential leverage” are an encroachment upon legislative and judicial constitutional powers or inherent in the penumbra of constitutional powers vested in the executive branch are encouraged to attend. This question is explored via concrete examples of presidential actions and associated case law.

Learning Objectives:

1. Engage in a historical review of different theories of presidential power from Abraham Lincoln through Franklin D. Roosevelt.
2. Evaluate the perceived modern trend toward Unitary Executive Theory from post-World War II to the second Trump Administration.
3. Evaluate the efficacy of the federal judiciary and Congress as checks on the exercise of presidential prerogative powers via case law and ongoing litigation.
4. Assess direct presidential prerogative powers that have been most commonly exercised by modern presidents since Ronald Reagan, including executive orders as strategic policy tools to achieve desired results via concrete examples.
5. Illustrate the indirect powers of the executive branch to achieve desired outcomes via presidential leverage, such as the paralysis by analysis via Presidential Commissions, veto warnings, executive signing statements, and agenda removal to encourage defunding/dismantling government programs inimical to the president’s agenda.
6. Delineate the potential advantages and disadvantages of executive overreach given the scope of the president’s enumerated Article II powers.

Course Time Schedule:

Eastern Time: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Central Time: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Mountain Time: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Pacific Time: 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Alaska Time: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Hawaii-Aleutian Time: 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

This course is also being presented on the following dates:

Friday, February 13, 2026
Friday, March 6, 2026
Friday, March 27, 2026
Friday, April 17, 2026
Friday, May 8, 2026