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26 “the pretended Power of Dispensing with Laws or the Execution of Laws by Rega[l] Authorit[y] as it ha[s] bee[n] assumed and exercised of late.”

By the time of the American Revolution, British monarchs had long abandoned the power to resist laws enacted by Parliament, but the Declaration of Independence charged George III with exercising those powers with respect to colonial enactments. One of the leading charges against him was that he had “forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, … ha[d] utterly neglected to attend to them.”

By 1787, six State Constitutions contained provisions prohibiting the suspension of laws, and at the Constitutional Convention, a proposal to grant the President suspending authority was unanimously defeated. Many