In a Monday New York Times article, Andrew Rudalevige, Bowdoin’s Thomas Brackett Reed Professor of Government, criticizes President Obama’s wield of unilateral power to advance his policy agenda.

“The executive branch is not really set up to be a deliberative body like the Congress is,” Rudalevige told the paper. “The process is certainly stacked toward the policy preferences of the administration, and they’re going to listen to the people they think are right, which usually means the ones who agree with them.

“Those who are ‘in’ will engage the White House and the agencies to get their priorities met, and if you’re ‘out,’ you turn to the legal process” to challenge the executive action after it is taken, he said.