Law & politics

President or king? Translated, that’s what the Supreme Court is asking about Obama.

All is forgiven if you’re not familiar with the “take care” clause in Article II of the Constitution about the presidency, the words that say “he shall take Care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The Supreme Court hasn’t fooled with it in many years. The words are buried below the State of the Union clause, and the business of receiving “Ambassadors and other public Ministers.” They lack resonance; they sound polite.

But their meaning, traced back through hundreds of years of history and translated into today’s colloquial English is indeed a command: They mean “Mr. President, don’t act like a king” — administer the law, but don’t dispense with it or change it.