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President/Executive Department

Executive branch

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Georgetown University Law Center

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Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Law

House Rules: Congress And The Attorney-Client Privilege, David Rapallo Jan 2022

House Rules: Congress And The Attorney-Client Privilege, David Rapallo

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In 2020, the Supreme Court rendered a landmark decision in Trump v. Mazars establishing four factors for determining the validity of congressional subpoenas for a sitting president’s personal papers. In an unanticipated move, Chief Justice John Roberts added that recipients of congressional subpoenas have “long been understood” to retain not only constitutional privileges, but common law privileges developed by judges, including the attorney-client privilege. This was particularly surprising since Trump was not relying on the attorney-client privilege and the Court had never treated this common law privilege as overriding Congress’s Article I power to set its own procedures for conducting …


Issuance Of The Keystone Xl Permit: Presidential Prerogative Or Presidential “Chutzpah”, Hope M. Babcock May 2020

Issuance Of The Keystone Xl Permit: Presidential Prerogative Or Presidential “Chutzpah”, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article uses President Trump's issuance of the Keystone XL Pipeline permit to illustrate the dangers of an imperial presidency, one in which the exercise of discretionary authority, based on neither the text of Article II of the Constitution nor a statute, will in all likelihood be unchecked by Congress, the courts, or popular opinion. To understand the dimensions of this concern, Part I of this article briefly describes the process and requirements for a presidential permit. Part II identifies key facts surrounding issuance of the Keystone XL Pipeline permit, the chronology of its issuance, and commonly given reasons supporting …


National Security Lawyering: The Best View Of The Law As A Regulative Ideal, Mary B. Derosa Apr 2018

National Security Lawyering: The Best View Of The Law As A Regulative Ideal, Mary B. Derosa

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In The National Security Lawyer in Crisis: When the “Best View” of the Law May Not Be the Best View, Robert Bauer describes the challenges for executive branch lawyers providing advice during a national security crisis. Bauer focuses on two especially perilous episodes in United States history—the Cuban Missile Crisis and the run-up to U.S. involvement in World War II—and analyzes the legal advice Presidents Kennedy and Roosevelt, respectively, received. In both cases, widely respected lawyers gave legal advice that supported the President’s preferred outcome, but almost certainly did not represent what the lawyers considered the best view of …