If it’s unprecedented, it’s because of the scope of the executive action, not the executive action itself. For decades, executive orders have been a fairly common tool for U.S. presidents. We looked atdata from the American Presidency Project and found that the use of executive orders peaked in the era of the New Deal (FDR set the record) and has been on the decline since. In the past 100 years, Democrats have used them more than Republicans. Here’s every president’s tally per year that he served in office.
On February 19, 1942, two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. In this one-page decree, the president used his authority as the commander-in-chief to authorize theU.S. military to “exclude” 122,000 Japanese Americans — more than half of them U.S. citizens — from their homes and businesses and relocate them to isolated and desolate internment camps
. A month later, Congress passed Public Law 503, making it a federal offense to disobey the president’s executive order.
An executive order, also known as a proclamation, is a directive handed down directly from a president or governor (the executive branch of government) without input from the legislative or judicial branches. Executive orders can only be given to federal or state agencies, not to citizens, although citizens are indirectly affected by them.
Executive orders have been used by every American president since George Washington to lead the nation through times of war, to respond to natural disasters and economic crises, to encourage or discourage regulation by federal agencies, to promote civil rights, or in the case of the Japanese internment camps, to revoke civil rights. Executive orders can also be used by governors to direct state agencies, often in response to emergencies, but also to promote the governor’s own regulatory and social policies.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/every-presidents-executive-actions-in-one-chart/
| President | Term |
Total Orders1 |
Average / Year | Years in Office | EO Number Range | |
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| George Washington | Total | 8 | 1.02 | 7.85 | unnumbered | |
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| John Adams | Total | 1 | 0.25 | 4.00 | unnumbered | |
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| Thomas Jefferson | Total | 4 | 0.50 | 8.00 | unnumbered | |
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| James Madison | Total | 1 | 0.13 | 8.00 | unnumbered | |
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| James Monroe | Total | 1 | 0.13 | 8.00 | unnumbered | |
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| John Quincy Adams | Total | 3 | 0.75 | 4.00 | unnumbered | |
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| Andrew Jackson | Total | 12 | 1.50 | 8.00 | unnumbered | |
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| Martin van Buren | Total | 10 | 2.50 | 4.00 | unnumbered | |
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| William Henry Harrison | Total | 0 | 0 | 0.08 | unnumbered | |
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| John Tyler | Total | 17 | 4.34 | 3.92 | unnumbered | |
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| James K. Polk | Total | 18 | 4.50 | 4.00 | unnumbered | |
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| Zachary Taylor | Total | 5 | 3.70 | 1.35 | unnumbered | |
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| Millard Fillmore | Total | 12 | 4.53 | 2.65 | unnumbered | |
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| Franklin Pierce | Total | 35 | 8.75 | 4.00 | unnumbered | |
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| James Buchanan | Total | 16 | 4.00 | 4.00 | unnumbered | |
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| Abraham Lincoln | Total | 48 | 11.65 | 4.12 | unnumbered | |
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| Andrew Johnson | Total | 79 | 20.31 | 3.89 | unnumbered | |
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| Ulysses S. Grant | Total | 217 | 27.13 | 8.00 | unnumbered | |
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| Rutherford B. Hayes | Total | 92 | 23.00 | 4.00 | unnumbered | |
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| James Garfield | Total | 6 | 10.91 | 0.55 | unnumbered | |
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| Chester Arthur | Total | 96 | 27.75 | 3.46 | unnumbered | |
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| Grover Cleveland – I | Total | 113 | 28.25 | 4.00 | unnumbered | |
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| Benjamin Harrison | Total | 143 | 35.75 | 4.00 | unnumbered | |
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| Grover Cleveland – II | Total | 140 | 35.00 | 4.00 | unnumbered | |
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| William McKinley | Total | 185 | 40.84 | 4.53 | unnumbered | |
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| Theodore Roosevelt | Total | 1,081 | 144.71 | 7.47 | ||
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| William Howard Taft | Total | 724 | 181.00 | 4.00 | ||
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| Woodrow Wilson | Total | 1,803 | 225.38 | 8.00 | ||
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| Warren G. Harding | Total | 522 | 216.60 | 2.41 | ||
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| Calvin Coolidge | Total | 1,203 | 215.21 | 5.59 | ||
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| Herbert Hoover | Total | 968 | 242.00 | 4.00 | 5075 – 6070 | |
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| Franklin D. Roosevelt | Total | 3,721 | 307.01 | 12.12 | 6071 – 9537 | |
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| Harry S. Truman | Total | 907 | 116.58 | 7.78 | 9538 – 10431 | |
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I | 504 | 133.33 | 3.78 | 9538 – 10029 | |
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II | 403 | 100.75 | 4.00 | 10030 – 10431 | |
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| Dwight D. Eisenhower | Total | 484 | 60.50 | 8.00 | 10432 – 10913 | |
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I | 266 | 66.50 | 4.00 | 10432 – 10695-A | |
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II | 218 | 54.50 | 4.00 | 10696 – 10913 | |
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| John F. Kennedy | Total | 214 | 75.35 | 2.84 | 10914 – 11127 | |
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| Lyndon B. Johnson | Total | 325 | 62.86 | 5.17 | 11128 – 11451 | |
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| Richard Nixon | Total | 346 | 62.34 | 5.55 | 11452 – 11797 | |
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I | 247 | 61.75 | 4.00 | 11452 – 11698 | |
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II | 99 | 63.87 | 1.55 | 11699 – 11797 | |
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| Gerald R. Ford | Total | 169 | 68.98 | 2.45 | 11798 – 11966 | |
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| Jimmy Carter | Total | 320 | 80.00 | 4.00 | 11967 – 12286 | |
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| Ronald Reagan | Total | 381 | 47.63 | 8.00 | 12287 – 12667 | |
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I | 213 | 53.25 | 4.00 | 12287 – 12499 | |
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II | 168 | 42.00 | 4.00 | 12500 – 12667 | |
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| George Bush | Total | 166 | 41.50 | 4.00 | 12668 – 12833 | |
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| William J. Clinton | Total | 364 | 45.50 | 8.00 | 12834 – 13197 | |
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I | 200 | 50.00 | 4.00 | 12834 – 13033 | |
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II | 164 | 41.00 | 4.00 | 13034 – 13197 | |
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| George W. Bush | Total | 291 | 36.38 | 8.00 | 13198 – 13488 | |
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I | 173 | 43.25 | 4.00 | 13198 – 13370 | |
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II | 118 | 29.50 | 4.00 | 13371 – 13488 | |
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| Barack Obama | Total | 193 | 33.10 | 5.83 | 13489 – 13681 | |
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I | 147 | 36.75 | 4.00 | 13489 – 13635 | |
| II | 46 | 25.14 | 1.83 | 13636 – 13681 | ||
| Note: Obama EO counts are updated monthly following the 20th day of the month to recompute average per year. Orders issued between updates can be accessed here: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/executive_orders.php?year=2014 |
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