Cato founder/​president/​CEO Ed Crane and Board member/​senior fellow Bob Levy take on “the president’s bogus claims of limitless executive power” in his battle with Congress over the Terrorist Surveillance Program:

Abiding by the Constitution will not always shield us from bad laws. Nonetheless, even if the Constitution is not a sufficient guidepost, it is certainly a necessary guidepost.

For many years, we were at risk of losing important civil liberties through unchecked transgressions by the executive branch. Maybe we are still at risk. But thanks to the media, the courts and — belatedly — an energized opposition in Congress, the administration has finally resigned itself to a semblance of congressional oversight, even if judicial scrutiny remains inadequate.

The president’s bogus claims of limitless executive power are, for now, on hold. That’s the right constitutional precedent even if it ultimately produces the wrong policy outcomes. Longer term, the precedent is more important than temporal policy judgments. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s plurality opinion in the Hamdi case nicely captured the key principle: “Whatever power the U.S. Constitution envisions for the Executive … in time of conflict, it most assuredly envisions a role for all three branches of government when individual civil liberties are at stake.”