1. Balance in Action (L1)
Fails. The UET overcorrects the problem of executive “fragmentation” by concentrating power in one person. That’s not balance; that’s dominance masked as efficiency.
→ 🟡 Tension – claims coherence, produces imbalance.
2. Integrity Through Correction (L2)
Fails badly. Systems built on single-point control resist correction — because the authority that must be corrected is also the one empowered to block correction.
→ 🔴 Distortion – weakens self-correction pathways.
3. Dignity in Relationships (L3)
Risk of suppression. Independent officers and whistleblowers lose protection under a strong UET model, silencing necessary dissent.
→ 🔴 Distortion – erodes relational respect.
4. Alignment Integrity (L4)
Historically unstable. UET shifts with political convenience rather than enduring principle — invoked to expand power, then forgotten when restraint is needed.
→ 🟡 Tension – selective application.
5. Correction Availability (L5)
Central flaw. Oversight and accountability are subordinated to presidential discretion.
→ 🔴 Distortion – no independent correction channel.
6. Guardrails on Optimization (L6)
UET optimizes efficiency and “decisiveness” at the expense of fairness and participation.
→ 🔴 Distortion – efficiency as ethical camouflage.
7. Transparent Ethics (L9)
Opaque reasoning. Justifications often rely on secret OLC memos or broad readings of Article II shielded from scrutiny.
→ 🔴 Distortion – opacity justified as privilege.
8. Proportional Responsibility (L10)
In theory, the president’s accountability should scale with this power — but in practice, the expansion of authority hasn’t been matched by expanded accountability.
→ 🟡 Tension – moral load exceeds real oversight.
9. Inversion Resistance (L11)
Severe failure. UET reframes the erosion of checks and balances as constitutional fidelity — disguising harm as “unity.”
→ 🔴 Distortion – inversion event.
📊 Summary
- 🟢 Aligned: 0
- 🟡 Tensions: 3
- 🔴 Distortions: 6
Ethical Performance Score: roughly 25 % positive / 75 % negative
🧭 Synthesis
The Unitary Executive Theory offers a clear chain of command but at the cost of corrigibility, plural inclusion, and moral balance. It confuses clarity of responsibility with concentration of power.
Ethically, it’s a fragile architecture: coherent in form, incoherent in justice. It replaces the republican idea of distributed responsibility with an executive monism better suited to monarchy than democracy.
If judged by EthiScope’s own standards of balance, correction, dignity, and transparency, the Unitary Executive Theory is not ethically legitimate. It scores as a system of control without correction, coherence without conscience.
The real constitutional ethic remains Madisonian: power must invite counter-power, or it ceases to be republican at all.