BUFFALO, N.Y. — In his first roughly three weeks in office, President Donald Trump has already signed more than 60 executive orders, outpacing previous administrations, including his own.

However, University at Buffalo political science professor and constitutional expert Shawn Donahue said presidents exercising this power is not altogether unusual.

"They've existed for the entire history of the country, so George Washington issued executive orders and we have the current president, Donald Trump, is issuing executive orders," Donahue said.

According to the American Presidency Project, Founding Fathers like Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson issued, on average, one or less per year. Recent administrations have totaled executive orders in the low hundreds, while several in the early to mid-20th century issued more than 1,000, with Franklin Delano Roosevelt standing out at more than 3,700.

"You've had in the past executive orders been done to do some really important things like integrating the federal workforce, or in the case of Woodrow Wilson, re-segregating it, integrating the military. There's a lot of different things that presidents have done over time. I think that there's just maybe more focus on it today," Donahue said.

The SUNY political scientist said executive orders are not supposed to be in place of a law or override a law Congress has passed or usurp any Constitutional power. Former Supreme Court Justice and Western New York native Robert Jackson established the standard for evaluating the limits.

"Where it really kind of comes from is if you were to look at your little pocket Constitution, you would see in Article II that there is a provision that the president is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed and that's where often that power is kind of drawn from," Donahue said.

Congress can push back on executive orders because it controls government spending and can pass laws, but Donahue says that is limited because a president can veto. He said the primary check and balance for executive orders is the judicial system.

"The one thing is, we have a very conservative Supreme Court right now and eventually some of these cases you will have to think will end up in the Supreme Court that has a more expansive view of executive authority, especially whenever you have a Republican president in power," he said.