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II, the Constitution indicates that the “executive Power” vested in the President is not confined to those powers expressly identified in the document. Instead, it includes all powers originally understood as falling within the “executive Power” of the Federal Government.

Founding-era evidence reveals that the “executive Power” included the foreign affairs powers of a sovereign State. See Prakash & Ramsey 253. John Locke's 17th-century writings laid the groundwork for this understanding of executive power. Locke described foreign affairs powersincluding the powers of “war and peace, leagues and alliances, and all the transactions with all persons and communities without the commonwealth"as “federative” power. Second Treatise of Civil Government § 146, p. 73 (J. Gough ed. 1947). He defned the “executive” power as “comprehending the execution of the municipal laws of the society within itself upon all that are parts of it.” Id., § 147, at 73. Importantly, however, Locke explained that the federative and executive powers must be lodged together, lest “disorder and ruin” erupt from the division of the “force of the public.” Id., § 148, at 73–74.

Subsequent thinkers began to refer to both of these powers as aspects of “executive power.” William Blackstone, for example, described the executive power in England as including foreign affairs powers, such as the “power of sending embassadors to foreign states, and receiving embassadors at home”; making “treaties, leagues, and alliances with foreign states and princes”; “making war and peace”; and “issu[ing] letters of marque and reprisal.” 1 Commentaries on the Laws of England 245, 249, 250, 242–252 (1765) (Blackstone). Baron de Montesquieu similarly described executive power as including the power to “mak[e] peace or war, sen[d] or receiv[e] embassies, establis[h] the public