The current issue about closing Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention center will shed light on a choice for President Barack Obama: follow legal principles he announced as a candidate or decide to invoke some type of unilateral authority. On Dec. 20, 2007, in response to questions by then-Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage, Obama criticized the George W. Bush administration for claiming broad presidential powers that could not be curbed by Congress. If elected president, Obama pledged to “follow existing law.” Asked if the Constitution empowered the president to disregard congressional statutes that limit the deployment of troops, he denied that the president possessed such power. As president, “I will not assert a constitutional authority to deploy troops in a manner contrary to an express limit imposed by Congress and adopted into law.” He emphasized that the president “is not above law,” America “is a nation of laws,” and as president “I will abide by statutory prohibitions.”

That understanding of the Constitution disappeared when Obama took office. In his second full day at the White House, on Jan. 22, 2009, he issued Executive Order 13492 to close the detention camp at Guantánamo “as soon as practicable, and no later than 1 year from the date of this order.” His advisers should have told him the obvious: Closure would require about $100 million to build an adequate facility in the United States to house the detainees, requiring an appropriation from Congress. Instead of trying to “settle” the matter unilaterally with an executive order, the two branches had to work jointly. His executive order provoked a rebuke from Democratic and Republican members of Congress.

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