This page simply consists of links to the enabling legislation for every executive department. I do not expect you to retain this information. But there are some points worth noting. The first is just formatting. I have not been able to locate every original document. Unless the department itself or a President involved thought the original significant, we are stuck with the current law as amended over time.
I would like to have you look at the enabling act for the department of Treasury. Though transcribed, we have the original document due to the foresight of the treasury department itself. Look how detailed it is. First, it names all the significant employees in the department. Second, in Sections 3 through 6 it gives the duties in fair detail. It provides for a replacement if one is needed, and most significantly, in my mind, it provides a complete set of instructions for impeaching any of the parties named if necessary. As far as I have seen, this is the only department that makes the failure to follow ones duties an impeachable offense.
Now look at the same subject as embodied in law today. It still itemizes all the titles and all the functions. Only it is at least ten times the length. It looks like the impeachment provisions have disappeared.
There are two conclusions I think you might make. First, it is an enourmous bureuocracy we have created. Any of you who have concerns on that score, could browse through any one of the departments to find all the examples you might want. Second, Congress is in charge of defining both the goals and the structure. Not the President.
We could spend a week on this subject, but it is not my intention to do so. However, before we move on, I would like to take a quick look at the Department of Interior, as it demonstrates an alternative approach to creating a new department. In this case, all that is being done is to consolidate a bunch of functions and their related staff, from their homes in existing departments into a new consolidation under a different name. I apologize for the poor quality of this document. In this case, all the new functions were added after the fact in subsequent legislation. The result can be seen in the current version.
This example, provides an easy jump to Presidential Reorganization Plans. Congress created this beast in 1932, and it allowed the President to simply submit a reorganization plan of his liking, and as long it was just moving existing parts around, the plan would be automatically approved unless vetoed by one or the other branches of Congress. The approach was in force until 1984 when the Supreme Court declared one-house legislative vetoes invalid. (INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S.919 (1983)) You can see from the table that such an approach was instramental in the creation of the Department of Health & Human Services.
You may feel like we have aalready come a long way from the subject of the Constitution. That is true only if you think the subject is what does the document say. My contention is that the only way you learn anything useful if the subject is how does the document work. Or Not. The Constitution gives all legislative authority to Congress. In the attempt to follow that stricture, Congress has taken on the task of designing the inter workings of all the executive departments. That became such an unmanagable task, they tried to get out of it by saying you can do anything you want unless we veto it. And the Supreme Court said in response, you can't do that because you are bypassing the protocal defined in the Constitution. So, what do you think we need to do?