In this table we present the total number of Executive Orders issued by presidential term (not calendar year). Decades ago, such documents were commonly titled “Letters.” Currently, these commonly are called “Memorandums” but can have many titles. There have always been many forms of Presidential orders in addition to the numbered Executive Orders and Executive Orders included in the published "unnumbered series". The editor, Lord, notes emphatically that “no distinction can be made between numbered and unnumbered Orders on the basis of subject matter, general applicability, public interest, or legal effect.” Estimates have reportedly ranged as high as 50,000. The best known compilation includes “over 1500” unnumbered orders, but the editor notes that the true total is unknown. In addition to the numbered executive orders, there are many unnumbered orders (see Lord 1943).
However, the Federal Register Act specified that such orders need not be published if they had “no general applicability and legal effect.” Thus, the text of some post-1936 orders is not available.
Today virtually all numbered Executive Orders are published. This practice explains why the total number of orders issued may be greater than the result that would be obtained by subtracting a president’s first order number from his last (and adding 1). Before then, and occasionally afterwards, discovery of an order not previously counted has resulted in assigning a number already in use together with an associated letter (e.g., 7709, 7709-A). President Hoover attempted to bring further order and regularity to the processing and documenting of Executive orders (ibid).īut it was not until the Federal Register Act in 1936 that a more thorough contemporaneous documentation of Executive Orders began. Through those efforts, the frequency of unnumbered orders declined sharply. Numbering of Executive Orders began in 1907 by the Department of State, which assigned numbers to all the orders in their files, dating from 1862 (Lord 1944, viii). The form, substance and numbers of presidential orders (jump to table below) has varied dramatically in the history of the US Presidency.
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