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Executive Orders Historical Archive
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Executive Order 12380 ⚖️✨ Zone 2: Zone of Twilight Constitutional Neutral (+0.02) 📜 Art. II §2: Commander-in-Chief Supervisory Authority

Executive Order 12380—Submarine Duty Incentive Pay

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Wednesday, August 18, 1982
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2 min read (416 words)

Executive Brief • At a Glance

⏱️ 2 min read (416 words) • ● In Effect
🎯 Primary Mandate

"(d) The Secretary of the Navy is hereby designated and empowered to issue additional implementing regulations with respect to entitlement of regular and reserve officers and enlisted members of the Navy to submarine duty incentive pay, or continuous monthly submarine duty incentive pay.".

⚖️ Constitutional Footing
⚖️✨ Zone 2: Zone of Twilight
Concurrent Authority / Congressional Silence
📜 Art. II §2: Commander-in-Chief Supervisory Authority
🏛️ Scope & Affected Sectors
Armed Forces & Military Establishments Executive Departments & Federal Civil Servants Private Citizens & Property Owners

Plain-English Translation & Framers' Constitutional Analysis

Early Statesman synthesis distilling legal jargon into practical meaning, statutory anchors, and structural constitutional impacts.

Signed by President Ronald Reagan on August 18, 1982, this order concerns Submarine Duty Incentive Pay. Section 106 of Executive Order No. 11157, as amended, is further amended to read as follows: "Sec. 106(a) As determined by the Secretary of the Navy, a member who is entitled to basic pay, who holds or is in training leading to a submarine duty designator, and who is in and remains in the submarine service on a career basis, is entitled to continuous monthly submarine duty incentive pay, subject to the performance…

Constitutional Assessment: Scrutinized through Article II, Section 2, this action exercises the President's constitutional role as Commander in Chief. Early Framers recognized broad executive discretion in commanding military forces during conflict, provided it remains bounded by congressional declarations and respects civilian domestic courts.

Key Directives & Operative Actions

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"(d) The Secretary of the Navy is hereby designated and empowered to issue additional implementing regulations with respect to entitlement of regular and reserve officers and enlisted members of the Navy to submarine duty incentive pay, or continuous monthly submarine duty incentive pay.".

Constitutional & Societal Entities Impacted

🏛️ Armed Forces & Military Establishments 🏛️ Executive Departments & Federal Civil Servants 🏛️ Private Citizens & Property Owners
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The Framers' Constitutional Council

1787 Prism

Evaluating this order against the constitutional debates of 1787 and the limits of Article II executive power.

⚖️✨ Zone 2 (Zone of Twilight)
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"When the President acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority."

— Justice Robert H. Jackson, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952) Concurrent Authority / Congressional Silence
JM

James Madison

Separation of Powers & Legislative Primacy

"Power is of an encroaching nature, and it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it." — Federalist No. 48 (1788)

Madison would view this order with watchful scrutiny. Operating in the 'Zone of Twilight' where Congress is silent, each such directive establishes an administrative precedent that steadily expands the executive perimeter at the expense of legislative primacy.

Madisonian Stance: Vigilant / Cautionary
AH

Alexander Hamilton

The Energetic Executive & Unified Command

"The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength must be under the direction of the single hand of the Executive." — Federalist No. 74 (1788)

Hamilton would forcefully champion executive discretion here. For foreign entanglements, commerce defense, and national security, deliberative assemblies are too slow and faction-ridden. A unified, energetic Executive exercising swift command is precisely what the Philadelphia Convention intended for national preservation.

Hamiltonian Stance: Strong Prerogative Support
GM

George Mason

Bill of Rights, Due Process & 10th Amendment

"The president will be surrounded by flatterers and sycophants... and the great powers of the executive will gradually absorb the liberties of the people." — Cato IV (Anti-Federalist, 1787)

The Anti-Federalist prism advises continuous democratic vigilance. Even routine administrative directives aggregate centralized federal power away from town halls and state assemblies toward a distant executive apparatus.

Anti-Federalist Stance: Eternal Vigilance Required
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Five Measurable "Constitutional Friction" Dimensions

An objective audit measuring potential separation-of-powers tension against the United States Constitution and established Supreme Court doctrine.

⚖️ Discretionary Twilight Zone
50 / 100 friction index
Dimension 1 • Art. I, §1 & §8

Legislative Encroachment & Purse

Moderate Friction

Administers commerce or fiscal programs requiring ongoing statutory delegation and legislative oversight.

Benchmark: Power of the purse, taxes/tariffs, and rule of law reserved to Congress.
Dimension 2 • Art. II, §1 & §3

Executive Scope & Faithfulness

Moderate Friction

Directs internal executive branch machinery, agency workflows, and federal personnel.

Benchmark: Faithfully execute laws enacted by Congress vs. unilateral decree.
Dimension 3 • 10th Amendment

Federalism & State Sovereignty

High Friction

Creates friction with the Tenth Amendment by conditioning state grants, mandating local compliance, or preempting state police powers.

Benchmark: Police powers and un-delegated responsibilities reserved to the States.
Dimension 4 • 5th & 14th Amendments

Due Process & Individual Rights

Low Friction

Focuses on internal governmental operations with no direct impairment of private rights or property.

Benchmark: Protection of private property, contracts, liberty, and procedural justice.
Dimension 5 • Separation of Powers

Youngstown Jacksonian Tier

Moderate Friction

The order relies on inherent Article II executive discretion, civil service management, or foreign diplomacy where Congress has neither expressly approved nor prohibited action.

Benchmark: Concurrent Authority / Congressional Silence
⚖️ Audit Synthesis

This order operates within Justice Jackson’s Zone of Twilight, resting upon concurrent presidential authority or congressional silence.

Weighted composite: Art. I (25%), Art. II (25%), Federalism (15%), Due Process (15%), Youngstown (20%).
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How to read these dimensions: Executive power expands whenever an administration acts without explicit statutory authorization from Congress (Article I), touches upon police powers historically reserved to the states (Tenth Amendment), or limits private rights and property without judicial process. A low friction score indicates strict concordance with enacted law; a high friction score highlights orders testing the limits of presidential discretion.
Total Words
416
2,468 characters
Estimated Read Time
2 min
@ 200 words / min
Flesch-Kincaid
16.4
Post-Graduate Legal
Language Tone Score
+0.02
Constitutional Neutral
How is this scored?
Text size:

Official Archival Text

View Source Document

By the authority vested in me as President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America by Section 301c of Title 37 of the United States Code, and in order to implement incentive pay for submarine duty by Navy enlisted members and officers, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. #sec-1

Incentive Pay for Submarine Duty. Section 106 of Executive Order No. 11157, as amended, is further amended to read as follows: "Sec. 106(a) As determined by the Secretary of the Navy, a member who is entitled to basic pay, who holds or is in training leading to a submarine duty designator, and who is in and remains in the submarine service on a career basis, is entitled to continuous monthly submarine duty incentive pay, subject to the performance of the required number of years of operational submarine duty (37 U.S.C. 301c(a) (3)-(4)), except as provided by 37 U.S.C. 301c(c). "(b) As determined by the Secretary of the Navy, a member who is entitled to basic pay but is not entitled to continuous monthly submarine duty incentive pay is entitled to submarine duty incentive pay for any period during which such member performs frequent and regular operational submarine duty required by orders. "(c) To the extent provided for by appropriations, a member of the Naval Reserve who is entitled to compensation under Section 206 of Title 37 of the United States Code, and who performs, under orders, duty on a submarine during underway operations, is eligible for an increase in such compensation equal to one-thirtieth of the monthly submarine duty incentive pay for the performance of that duty by a member of a corresponding grade and years of service who is entitled to basic pay when those orders specify such increased entitlement. Such member is eligible for the increase for each day served, for as long as he is qualified for it, during each regular period of appropriate duty. "(d) The Secretary of the Navy is hereby designated and empowered to issue additional implementing regulations with respect to entitlement of regular and reserve officers and enlisted members of the Navy to submarine duty incentive pay, or continuous monthly submarine duty incentive pay.".

Sec. 2. #sec-2

Effective Date. In accord with Section 701 of Public Law 97-39, the amendments made by this Order shall be effective as of January 1, 1981. RONALD REAGAN The White House, August 18, 1982. [Filed with the Office of the Federal Register 2:32 p.m., August 19, 1982]

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Scholarly & Legal Citations

Exec. Order No. 12,380 (Aug. 18, 1982), https://executiveordersarchive.org/orders/app-executive-order-12380-submarine-duty-incentive-pay.