Expected: late November 2026.

The question in the title is asked of every office: by what standard does the person holding it act, and who can hold them to that standard? A standard, in the sense this book uses the word, is a public claim about the limits of one’s own power. It has to be stated so that it can be found, general so that it applies to allies as well as opponents, and binding on the person who stated it. Without those three properties it is a preference dressed as a principle.

The argument is institutional rather than electoral. The republic is failing less from villainy than from the collapse of the standards applied to office: villainy is the smaller part, and the machinery that once made it costly no longer works. A president can abuse an office only if the other branches let the abuse stand, which is why the first branch comes first here. Congress holds the powers that check a president, and those powers are exercised only when members choose to exercise them.

The method is documentary. An inaugural address, an executive order, a proclamation, an opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel, a roll-call vote, a filing with the Supreme Court: each one fixes a claim at a moment, and each one can be set beside the claim that came before it. The language is quoted exactly, the judgment is the author’s, and the notes are grouped by chapter at the back so that a reader can check the argument in order.