The DOJ consists of 40 component organizations, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Marshals, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Attorney General is the head of the Department of Justice and the highest law enforcement official in the federal government. The Attorney General represents the United States in legal matters, advises the president and heads of executive divisions of government, and occasionally appears in person before the Supreme Court. The Library of Congressional Law has compiled the following selective bibliography of resources related to signing presidential statements. The bibliography includes congressional hearings, court cases in which signing statements were discussed, articles in legal journals, selective press releases, news articles, and other secondary documents. All implementing regulations and substantive proclamations to be issued by the President are reviewed as to form and legality by the Office of the Legal Counsel, as well as various other matters requiring the formal approval of the President. Once in power, cabinet secretaries are seen as defenders of their political sphere, champions of workers in their ministries and aggressive budgetists. Predictably, they want the president to focus attention on their own political priorities. When recruiting cabinet secretaries, presidents often tell them that they are essential to the success of government, that they will be the principal advisers in their policy areas, and that they will have reasonable discretion in selecting policy appointees. However, recent history shows that presidents can rarely deliver on these promises. On behalf of the Attorney-General, the Deputy Attorney-General in charge of the Legal Aid Service advises the President and all executive authorities. The Office prepares the legal opinions of the Attorney General and issues its own written and other advice in response to requests from the President`s Adviser, the various executive agencies and other parts of the Ministry of Justice.

These requests generally involve particularly complex and important legal issues, or on which two or more organizations disagree. The Office is also responsible for reviewing and advising on the constitutionality of pending legislation. The reality is that the duties and inclinations of cabinet secretaries often put them on a collision course with White House staff trying to rein in them and use them for presidential priorities. As Charles Dawes, the first director of the Budget Office, put it, «Cabinet secretaries are vice presidents for spending and, as such, the president`s natural enemies.» Cabinet secretaries, of course, don`t like to be overshadowed by White House staff, who tend to be younger than them and often seen as political loyalists rather than political pundits. Staff have access to the president and appear to impose their personal preferences on cabinet. President Obama`s cabinet secretaries did not appreciate Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel treating them as his «lackeys.» «[The president] should ensure that laws are enforced expeditiously.» Article II, § 3. Thus, President Obama continued the 20th century trend of centralizing control in the White House and fueling the frustration of cabinet secretaries. But in the modern presidency, coordination of administrative policy from the President`s point of view is essential. The challenge is to maintain a healthy balance between over-centralization and the reverse problem of lack of coordination in policy design and implementation across departments and agencies. In the exercise of his delegated authority, Holder decided to try some 9/11 terrorism suspects in criminal court rather than military tribunals, and he chose New York as his venue. The decision caused a political outcry when congressional leaders threatened to legislate to mandate military commissions at Guantanamo rather than on the American mainland. Holder`s decisions reinforced suspicions among White House staff that he was not sensitive enough to the president`s political interests.

In the end, White House staff, especially Chief of Staff Emanuel, convinced Obama that the political impact of Holder`s decisions was greater than Holder`s legal decisions and his independence from the White House. Obama`s experiment with the delegation failed at the hands of White House staff, illustrating the need for centralized control of White House policy. There were, of course, reasons for these changes; Executive power is vast and includes a plethora of conflicting and overlapping bureaucracies, and presidents need a capacity for coordination and integration to restrict and control political direction in the executive branch. Presidents, however, now assume that these functions fall within the realm of White House staff. For most of U.S. history, Cabinet Secretaries have been among the most important official advisers to presidents, exercising important leadership roles in the implementation of government policies and programs. With the sharp expansion of the government`s role in the economy in response to the Great Depression, Congress granted authorization to create White House staff, which was formalized in 1939 with the creation of the President`s Executive Office. Official White House staff began with six advisers to the president, but Presidents Truman and Eisenhower continued to rely heavily on their cabinet secretaries for political advice.