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President/Executive Department

Selected Works

Appropriations

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Disappropriation, Matthew Lawrence Dec 2019

Disappropriation, Matthew Lawrence

Matthew B. Lawrence

In recent years Congress has repeatedly failed to appropriate funds necessary to honor legal commitments (aka entitlements) that are themselves enacted in permanent law. The Appropriations Clause has forced the government to defy legislative command and break such commitments, with destructive results for recipients and the rule of law. This Article is the first to address this poorly-understood phenomenon, which it labels a form of “disappropriation.” 

The Article theorizes recent high-profile disappropriations as one probabilistic consequence of Congress’s decision to create permanent legislative payment commitments that the government cannot honor without periodic, temporary appropriations. Such partially-temporary programs include Medicaid and …

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Congress's Power To Block Enforcement Of Federal Court Orders, Jennifer Mason Mcaward Nov 2013

Congress's Power To Block Enforcement Of Federal Court Orders, Jennifer Mason Mcaward

Jennifer Mason McAward

This Article considers the constitutionality and propriety of recent appropriations riders passed by the House of Representatives in response to controversial federal court rulings. The riders prohibit the use of any federal funds for the enforcement of court orders issued in specified cases. These enforcement-blocking provisions raise significant separation-of-powers concerns as between Congress and both coordinate branches of the federal government. The Article begins by looking at the controversial First Amendment rulings that triggered the enforcement-blocking riders, and the Congressional debates over the proper way to respond to the rulings. The riders are not merely symbolic protests, but could have …

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