George Washington University professor Matthew Dallek published an op-ed in the New York Daily News on the history of executive orders, a topic he recently discussed as a participant in the National History Center’s Congressional Briefing. Dallek highlights a number of past executive orders and their varying degrees of success. “The power of a presidential pen has been restricted by the fast-shifting politics of the times,” Dallek writes, and “for the most part, executive orders have not become, as critics of the imperial president have feared, the friend of the authoritarian.”