The above clause, which imposes a duty rather than confers a power, is the formal basis of the President's legislative leadership, which has attained great proportions since 1900. This development, however, represents the play of political and social forces rather than any pronounced change in constitutional interpretation. Especially is it the result of the rise of parties and the accompanying recognition of the President as party leader, of the appearance of the National Nominating Convention and the Party Platform, and of the introduction of the Spoils System, an ever present help to Presidents in times of troubled relations with Congress.[329] It is true that certain pre-Civil War Presidents, mostly of Whig extraction, professed to entertain nice scruples on the score of "usurping" legislative powers;[330] but still earlier ones, Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson among them, took a very different line, albeit less boldly and persistently than their later imitators.[331] Today there is no subject on which the President may not appropriately communicate to Congress, in as precise terms as he chooses, his conception of its duty. Conversely, the President is not obliged by this clause to impart information which, in his judgment, should in the public interest be withheld.[332] The President has frequently summoned both Houses into "extra" or "special sessions" for legislative purposes, and the Senate alone for the consideration of nominations and treaties. His power to adjourn the Houses has never been exercised.
The Right of Reception
SCOPE OF THE POWER
"Ambassadors and other public ministers" embraces not only "all possible diplomatic agents which any foreign power may accredit to the United States"[333] but also, as a practical construction of the Constitution, all foreign consular agents, who therefore may not exercise their functions in the United States without an exequatur from the President.[334] The power to "receive" ambassadors, etc., includes, moreover, the right to refuse to receive them, to request their recall, to dismiss them, and to determine their eligibility under our laws.[335] Furthermore, this power makes the President the sole mouthpiece of the nation in its dealings with other nations.
Wrote Jefferson in 1790: "The transaction of business with foreign nations is Executive altogether. It belongs, then, to the head of that department, except as to such portions of it as are specially submitted to the Senate. Exceptions are to be construed strictly."[336] So when Citizen Genet, envoy to the United States from the first French Republic, sought an exequatur for a consul whose commission was addressed to the Congress of the United States, Jefferson informed him that "as the President was the only channel of communication between the United States and foreign nations, it was from him alone 'that foreign nations or their agents are to learn what is or has been the will of the nation;' that whatever he communicated as such, they had a right and were bound to consider 'as the expression of the nation;' and that no foreign agent could be 'allowed to question it,' or 'to interpose between him and any other branch of government, under the pretext of either's transgressing their functions.' Mr. Jefferson therefore declined to enter into any discussion of the question as to whether it belonged to the President under the Constitution to admit or exclude foreign agents. 'I inform you of the fact,' he said, 'by authority from the President.' Mr. Jefferson therefore returned the consul's commission and declared that the President would issue no exequatur to a consul except upon a commission correctly addressed."[337]
"THE LOGAN ACT"
When in 1798 a Philadelphia Quaker named Logan went to Paris on his own to undertake a negotiation with the French Government with a view to averting war between France and the United States his enterprise stimulated Congress to pass "An Act to Prevent Usurpation of Executive Functions,"[338] which, "more honored in the breach than the observance," still survives on the statute books.[339] The year following John Marshall, then a Member of the House of Representatives, defended President John Adams for delivering a fugitive from justice to Great Britain under the 27th article of the Jay Treaty, instead of leaving the business to the courts. He said: "The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations. Of consequence, the demand of a foreign nation can only be made on him. He possesses the whole Executive power. He holds and directs the force of the nation. Of consequence, any act to be performed by the force of the nation is to be performed through him."[340] Ninety-nine years later a Senate Foreign Relations Committee took occasion to reiterate Marshall's doctrine with elaboration.[341]
A FORMAL OR A FORMATIVE POWER?
In his attack, instigated by Jefferson, upon Washington's Proclamation of Neutrality in 1793, at the outbreak of war between France and Great Britain, Madison advanced the argument that all large questions of foreign policy fell within the ambit of Congress, by virtue of its power "to declare war," and in support of this proposition he disparaged the Presidential function of reception, in the following words: "I shall not undertake to examine, what would be the precise extent and effect of this function in various cases which fancy may suggest, or which time may produce. It will be more proper to observe, in general, and every candid reader will second the observation, that little, if anything, more was intended by the clause, than to provide for a particular mode of communication, almost grown into a right among modern nations; by pointing out the department of the government, most proper for the ceremony of admitting public ministers, of examining their credentials, and of authenticating their title to the privileges annexed to their character by the law of nations. This being the apparent design of the constitution, it would be highly improper to magnify the function into an important prerogative, even when no rights of other departments could be affected by it."[342]