The Flag Acts are three laws that sought to define the design of the flag of the United States. All the submitted suggestions were remarkably short, the shortest being a sentence of 31 words, and the longest being a title and two sentences of 117 words.
The brevity of the Acts leave a lot of ambiguity since neither the size or shape of the flag nor the exact colors or the size or placement of the design elements is specified. In 1912, there were 66 different designs in use which led William Howard Taft to address some of those shortcomings by issuing Executive Order 1556 which specified the size and placement of the design elements and the size and shape of the flag but not the specific colors.[1] Executive Order 1637 later added a specific design example.[1] The specifications were later further refined and revised by further executive orders but never codified into law. As of May 2023[update], Executive Order 10834 issued by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960 is the most recent executive order to establish these specifications. Since executive orders can be revoked or modified by any president, future presidents could change the look of the flag used by federal agencies at will.
- ^ a b Vile, John R. (2018-10-05). The American Flag: An Encyclopedia of the Stars and Stripes in U.S. History, Culture, and Law. ABC-CLIO. p. 264. ISBN 978-1-4408-5789-8.