Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers: William Howard Taft with Foreword, Introduction and Notes by H. Jefferson Powell (Legal History Series)

Taft's 1916 publication, written from the unique vantage point of a former president who was later to become Chief Justice, is one of the most insightful descriptions of the presidential office ever written. In contrast to the views of his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt, and his successor, Woodrow Wilson, the presidency as Taft envisioned it is decisively shaped by the president's duties to the law. Taft firmly rejected Roosevelt's and Wilson's assumptions that a law-governed presidency need be weak or unable to respond to national needs. This classic work is once again available, with new material by constitutional scholar H. Jefferson Powell. Powell's extensive introduction places Taft's thinking in its original context and explicates the major themes in his discussion of the president and of the relationship between law and politics in American government. Endnotes by Powell supply commentary and bibliographical information to specific points in Taft's text.