Anexecutive order is a directive issued by the head of state or government that manages the operations of a nation's federal administration. While the structure and authority of executive orders vary by country, they generally allow leaders to direct government agencies, implement policies, or respond to emergencies without new legislation. In many systems, the legality of such orders is subject to constitutional or legislative limits and judicial oversight. The term is most prominently associated withpresidential systems such as that of theUnited States, where executive orders carry legal weight within the president's administration.
In the United States, an executive order is adirective by thepresident of the United States that manages operations of thefederal government.[1] Executive orders are only binding on the federal government'sexecutive branch. The legal or constitutional basis for executive orders has multiple sources.Article Two of the United States Constitution gives presidents broad executive and enforcement authority to use their discretion to determine how to enforce the law or to otherwise manage the resources and staff of the federal government's executive branch. The delegation ofdiscretionary power to make such orders is required to be supported by either anexpressed orimpliedcongressional law, or the constitution itself.[2] The vast majority of executive orders are proposed byfederal agencies before being issued by the president.[3]
Like bothlegislative statutes and theregulations promulgated by government agencies, executive orders are subject tojudicial review and may be overturned if the orders lack support by statute orthe Constitution. Some policy initiatives require approval by thelegislative branch, but executive orders have significant influence over the internal affairs of government, deciding how and to what degree legislation will be enforced, dealing with emergencies, waging wars, and in general fine-tuning policy choices in the implementation of broad statutes. As the head of state and head of government of the United States, as well as commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces, only the president of the United States can issue an executive order.
Presidential executive orders, once issued, remain in force until they are canceled, revoked, adjudicated unlawful, or expire on their terms. At any time, the president may revoke, modify or make exceptions from any executive order, whether the order was made by the current president or a predecessor. Typically, a new president reviews in-force executive orders in the first few weeks in office.
Many countries have mechanisms for executive orders, though their structure and legal authority differ by country. In the United Kingdom and Canada, executive actions, known asOrders in Council, are issued by the Monarch or Governor General on ministerial advice and can be based on statutory or prerogative powers. In France, India, and Russia, the executive is granted temporary legislative powers or the ability to issue decrees, often for urgent or administrative purposes, subject to approval or judicial review.
TheUnited States Constitution does not have a provision that explicitly permits the use of executive orders.Article II, Section 1,Clause 1 of the Constitution simply states: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." Sections 2 and 3 describe the various powers and duties of the president, including "He shall take care that the Laws be faithfully executed".[4]
TheU.S. Supreme Court has held[5] that all executive orders from the president of the United States must be supported by the Constitution, whether from a clause granting specific power, or by Congress delegating such to the executive branch.[6] Specifically, such orders must be rooted inArticle II of the US Constitution or enacted by the Congress instatutes. Attempts to block such orders have been successful at times, when such orders either exceeded the authority of the president or could be better handled through legislation.[7]
TheOffice of the Federal Register is responsible for assigning the executive order a sequential number, after receipt of the signed original from the White House and printing the text of the executive order in the dailyFederal Register and eventually inTitle 3 of theCode of Federal Regulations.[8]
In the United States, executive orders are generally written in thefirst person, includingpronouns such as "I" and "me".[1] Each order has a title, a date of issue, and a unique numeric identifier,[1] with orders being numbered consecutively.[9] These three elements usually appear at the beginning of the document, although the date or numeric identifier sometimes appear at the end of historical documents.[1] The introductory text of the order usually starts with a phrase indicating the issuer's authority.[1] For example: "By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered [...]"[10] Sometimes the introduction will be longer, and may include the issuer's legal rationale for the order.[1]
The body of the document is generally broken into numbered or lettered sections and subsections. According to theAmerican Bar Association, "[sections] spell out the orders, action steps to realize the orders, and other directives, such as study or evaluation, and subsections add additional details, including any relevant definitions."[1] The last section of an order is usually administrative, including a directive to publish the order in theFederal Register.[1]
With the exception ofWilliam Henry Harrison, all presidents sinceGeorge Washington in 1789 have issued orders that in general terms can be described as executive orders. Initially, they took no set form and so they varied as to form and substance.[11]
The first executive order was issued by Washington on June 8, 1789; addressed to the heads of the federal departments, it instructed them "to impress [him] with a full, precise, and distinct general idea of the affairs of the United States" in their fields.[12][13]
According to political scientist Brian R. Dirck, the most famous executive order was by PresidentAbraham Lincoln when he issued theEmancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, which in part contained explicit directions to the Army, the Navy, and other Executive departments:
The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order, itself a rather unusual thing in those days. Executive orders are simply presidential directives issued to agents of the executive department by its boss.[14]
Until the early 1900s, executive orders were mostly unannounced and undocumented, and seen only by the agencies to which they were directed.
That changed when theUS Department of State instituted anumbering scheme in 1907, starting retroactively with United States Executive Order 1, issued on October 20, 1862, by President Lincoln.[15] The documents that later came to be known as "executive orders" apparently gained their name from that order issued by Lincoln, which was captioned "Executive Order Establishing a Provisional Court in Louisiana".[16] That court functioned during the military occupation ofLouisiana during theAmerican Civil War, and Lincoln also used Executive Order 1 to appointCharles A. Peabody as judge and designate the salaries of the court's officers.[15]
PresidentHarry Truman's Executive Order 10340 placed all the country'ssteel mills under federal control, which was found invalid inYoungstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 US 579 (1952), because it attempted to make law, rather than to clarify or to further a law put forth by the Congress or the Constitution. Presidents since that decision have generally been careful to cite the specific laws under which they act when they issue new executive orders; likewise, when presidents believe that their authority for issuing an executive order stems from within the powers outlined in the Constitution, the order instead simply proclaims "under the authority vested in me by the Constitution".
Wars have been fought upon executive order, including the 1999Kosovo War during PresidentBill Clinton's second term in office; however, all such wars have also had authorizing resolutions from Congress. The extent to which the president may exercise military power independently of Congress and the scope of theWar Powers Resolution remain unresolved constitutional issues, but all presidents since the passage of the resolution have complied with its terms, while also maintaining that they are not constitutionally required to do so.
Harry S. Truman issued 907 executive orders, with 1,081 orders made byTheodore Roosevelt, 1,203 orders made byCalvin Coolidge, and 1,803 orders made byWoodrow Wilson.Franklin D. Roosevelt has the distinction of making a record 3,721 executive orders.[17]
In 2021, PresidentJoe Biden issued 42 executive orders in the first 100 days of his presidency, more than any other president since Harry Truman.[18] However, in 2025,Donald Trump became the president to issue the most executive orders in his first 100 days with 143, surpassing Franklin Roosevelt's 99.[19]
Before 1932, uncontested executive orders had determined such issues as national mourning on the death of a president and the lowering of flags to half-staff.
PresidentFranklin Roosevelt issued the first of his 3,721 executive orders on March 6, 1933, declaring abank holiday, and forbidding banks to releasegold coin orbullion.Executive Order 6102 forbade the hoarding of gold coin, bullion andgold certificates. A further executive order required all newly mined domestic gold be delivered to the Treasury.[20]
By Executive Order 6581, the president created theExport-Import Bank of the United States. On March 7, 1934, he established theNational Recovery Review Board (Executive Order 6632). On June 29, the president issued Executive Order 6763 "under the authority vested in me by the Constitution", thereby creating theNational Labor Relations Board.
In 1934, whileCharles Evans Hughes wasChief Justice of the United States (the period being known as theHughes Court), the Court found that theNational Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) was unconstitutional. The president then issued Executive Order 7073 "by virtue of the authority vested in me under the saidEmergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935", re-establishing theNational Emergency Council to administer the functions of the NIRA in carrying out the provisions of the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act. On June 15, he issued Executive Order 7075, which terminated the NIRA and replaced it with the Office of Administration of theNational Recovery Administration.[21]
In the years that followed, Roosevelt replaced outgoing justices of the Supreme Court with people more in line with his views:Hugo Black,Stanley Reed,Felix Frankfurter,William O. Douglas,Frank Murphy,Robert H. Jackson andJames F. Byrnes. Historically, only George Washington has had equal or greater influence over Supreme Court appointments (as he chose all its original members).
Justices Frankfurter, Douglas, Black, and Jackson dramatically checked presidential power by invalidating the executive order at issue inYoungstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer: in that case Roosevelt's successor,Harry S. Truman, had ordered private steel production facilities seized inExecutive Order 10340 to support theKorean War effort: the Court held that the executive order was not within the power granted to the president by the Constitution.
Large policy changes with wide-ranging effects have been implemented by executive order, including theracial integration of thearmed forces under President Truman.
Two extreme examples of an executive order are Franklin Roosevelt'sExecutive Order 6102 "forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States", andExecutive Order 9066, which delegated military authority to remove any or all people in a military zone (used to targetJapanese Americans, non-citizenGermans, and non-citizenItalians in certain regions). The order was then delegated toGeneralJohn L. DeWitt, and it subsequently paved the way for all Japanese-Americans on theWest Coast to be incarcerated in ten specially built prison camps for the duration ofWorld War II.
PresidentGeorge W. Bush issuedExecutive Order 13233 in 2001, which restricted public access to the papers of former presidents. The order was criticized by theSociety of American Archivists and other groups, who say it "violates both the spirit and letter of existing U.S. law on access to presidential papers as clearly laid down in 44USC 2201–07", and adding that the order "potentially threatens to undermine one of the very foundations of our nation". PresidentBarack Obama subsequently revoked Executive Order 13233 in January 2009.[23]
In 1935, the Supreme Court overturned five of Franklin Roosevelt's executive orders (6199, 6204, 6256, 6284a and 6855).[24][25]
Executive Order 12954, issued by PresidentBill Clinton in 1995, attempted to prevent the federal government from contracting with organizations that hadstrike-breakers on the payroll: a federal appeals court ruled that the order conflicted with theNational Labor Relations Act and overturned the order.[26][27]
Congress has the power to overturn an executive order by passing legislation that invalidates it, and can also refuse to provide funding necessary to carry out certain policy measures contained with the order or legitimize policy mechanisms.
In the case of the former, the president retains the power to veto such a decision; however, Congress may override a veto with a two-thirds majority to end an executive order. It has been argued that a congressional override of an executive order is a nearly impossible event, because of thesupermajority vote required, and the fact that such a vote leaves individual lawmakers vulnerable to political criticism.[28]
On July 30, 2014, theUS House of Representatives approved a resolution authorizingSpeaker of the HouseJohn Boehner to sue President Obama over claims that he exceeded his executive authority in changing a key provision of theAffordable Care Act ("Obamacare") on his own[29] and over what Republicans claimed had been "inadequate enforcement of the health care law", which Republican lawmakers opposed. In particular, Republicans "objected that theObama administration delayed some parts of the law, particularly the mandate on employers who do not provide health care coverage".[30] The suit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia on November 21, 2014.[31]
Part of PresidentDonald Trump's executive orderProtecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, which temporarily banned entry to the US of citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, including for permanent residents,was stayed by a federal court on January 28, 2017.[32] However, on June 26, 2018, the US Supreme Court overturned the lower court order inTrump v. Hawaii and affirmed that the executive order was within the president's constitutional authority.[33]
The degree to which the president has the power to use executive orders to set policy forindependent federal agencies is disputed.[34] Many orders specifically exempt independent agencies, but some do not.[35]Executive Order 12866 has been a particular matter of controversy; it requires cost-benefit analysis for certain regulatory actions.[36][37][38][39]
Executive orders issued by stategovernors are not the same as statutes passed by state legislatures. State executive orders are usually based on existing constitutional or statutory powers of the governor and do not require any action by the state legislature to take effect.[40][41][42][43][44]
Executive orders may, for example, demand budget cuts fromstate government when thestate legislature is not in session, and economic conditions take adownturn, thereby decreasing tax revenue below what was forecast when the budget was approved. Depending on thestate constitution, a governor may specify by what percentage eachgovernment agency must reduce and may exempt those that are already particularly underfunded or cannot put long-term expenses (such ascapital expenditures) off until a laterfiscal year. The governor may also call the legislature intospecial session.
There are also other uses for gubernatorial executive orders. In 2007, for example,Sonny Perdue, the governor of Georgia, issued an executive order for allits state agencies to reduce water use during a majordrought. The same was demanded ofits counties' water systems as well, but it was unclear whether the order would have the force of law.
According to political expert Phillip J. Cooper, apresidential proclamation "states a condition, declares a law and requires obedience, recognizes an event or triggers the implementation of a law (by recognizing that the circumstances in law have been realized)".[45] Presidents define situations or conditions on situations that become legal or economic truth. Such orders carry the same force of law as executive orders, the difference between being that executive orders are aimed at those inside government, but proclamations are aimed at those outside government.
The administrative weight of those proclamations is upheld because they are often specifically authorized by congressional statute, making them "delegated unilateral powers". Presidential proclamations are often dismissed as a practical presidential tool for policy making because of the perception that proclamations are largely ceremonial or symbolic in nature. However, the legal weight of presidential proclamations suggests their importance to presidential governance.[46]
Many jurisdictions have mechanisms for executive orders, though their form, scope, and legal basis vary according to constitutional and administrative systems.
Canada uses Orders-in-Council, which are formal decisions by theGovernor General of Canada acting on Cabinet advice. They are used to implement legislation, authorize regulations, and manage public appointments. Orders may be based on enabling legislation or prerogative powers and are subject to judicial review.
The French government may issueordonnances under Article 38 of theConstitution of France. These allow the executive to adopt measures normally reserved for Parliament, following prior authorization. Ordonnances take immediate effect but must be ratified by Parliament to retain full legal status. They are often used to accelerate administrative or economic reforms.
Article 48(4) ofHong Kong'sBasic Law empowers theChief Executive to make executive orders but does not elaborate on the scope of this power or how it can be exercised,[47] though the concept has been clarified by the courts in the years since 1997. Executive orders in Hong Kong are not legislation or law; they cannot create criminal offences, amend legislation, or impose obligations on members of the public, but they can bind civil servants and can be enforced through disciplinary action.[48]
Executive orders are used sparingly in Hong Kong; the first executive order, the Public Service (Administration) Order 1997 (cited as Executive Order No. 1 of 1997), was issued in 1997 shortly after theHandover to replace the role of the Colonial Regulations in relation to the appointment, dismissal and discipline ofpublic servants,[49] with statutory references to the Colonial Regulations replaced with references to the Public Service (Administration) Order.[50]
Given the status of the Colonial Regulations as imperial instruments made under theroyal prerogative, there is some doubt as to whether executive orders are equivalent in scope and authority to the Colonial Regulations. While theCourt of First Instance held inThe Association of Expatriate Civil Servants of Hong Kong v Chief Executive [1998] 1 HKLRD 615 that executive orders are not law,[48] it did not rule on whether executive orders are equivalent to the Colonial Regulations. If executive orders were to be considered law, it would confer on the Chief Executive a plenary legislative power, a breach of the principle ofseparation of powers.[49]
A second controversy in relation to executive orders arose in 2005, when Chief ExecutiveDonald Tsang issued the Law Enforcement (Covert Surveillance Procedures) Order to regulatecovert surveillance conducted bylaw enforcement agencies, which had previously been regulated only by internal guidelines and was potentially in breach of the Basic Law Article 30 requirement that surveillance must be conducted "in accordance with legal procedures". While it was settled that executive orders were not law, the government asserted that an executive order would satisfy the "legal procedure" requirement laid down in the Basic Law.[48]
ThePresident of India can issue ordinances under Article 123 when Parliament is not in session. These have the force of law but must be approved within six weeks of reassembly. They are intended for urgent matters and are also available togovernors under Article 213. The President may also issue presidential orders under specific constitutional provisions. These are used to apply, adapt, or clarify parts of the Constitution in certain contexts.
In Russia, the President may issue decrees (ukazy) to direct executive agencies, make appointments, and implement policy. Decrees have legal force unless they conflict with the Constitution or federal laws.
In theUnited Kingdom, executive decisions may be issued asOrders in Council. These are made by the Monarch on the advice of ministers and may be based on statutory authority or the royal prerogative. Orders issued under statute serve as delegated legislation. Those issued under the prerogative are generally limited to matters such as overseas territories, defense, or civil service appointments.
This article incorporatespublic domain material from websites or documents of theNational Archives and Records Administration.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)he's far outpacing them on executive orders. Biden has issued 42 to date, more than any president going back to Harry Truman
