Law Commons^™

Lawyering The Presidency, Deborah Pearlstein

Articles

Among its many profound effects on American life, the Trump presidency has triggered a surge of interest in the project of law reform to better check the exercise of presidential power. Yet these reform efforts arise against a wholly unsettled debate about the function and effectiveness of existing checks, perhaps none more so than the role of executive branch legal counsel. With courts often deferential, and Congress hamstrung by partisan polarization, scholars have drawn on the experiences of executive branch lawyers to assess whether counsel functions as part of an “internal separation of powers” form of constraint. Yet while these …

Going Rogue: The Supreme Court's Newfound Hostility To Policy-Based Bivens Claims, Joanna C. Schwartz, Alexander A. Reinert, James E. Pfander

Articles

In Ziglar v. Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. 1843 (2017), the Supreme Court held that a proposed Bivens remedy was subject to an exacting special factors analysis when the claim arises in a “new context.” In Ziglar itself, the Court found the context of the plaintiffs’ claims to be “new” because, in the Court’s view, they challenged “large-scale policy decisions concerning the conditions of confinement imposed on hundreds of prisoners.” Bivens claims for damages caused by unconstitutional policies, the Court suggested, were inappropriate.

This Essay critically examines the Ziglar Court’s newfound hostility to policy-based Bivens claims. We show that an …

Article I: Reforming The War Powers Resolution For The 21st Century, Rebecca Ingber

Testimony

Professor Rebecca Ingber testified at a U.S. House Committee on Rules hearing on March 23, 2021, titled "Article I: Reforming the War Powers Resolution for the 21st Century."

Preparing The Public For A Contested Election, Deborah Pearlstein

Online Publications

While perhaps once thought too far-fetched to discuss out loud in serious company, concerns that Donald Trump will refuse to leave office even if he loses the November election have gained increasing mainstream attention in recent months. Indeed, it would be foolish to assume that such a possibility is out of the question. The president has spent the past four years making clear his desire to remain more than two terms in office, and has worked especially diligently of late to lay the rhetorical groundwork for declaring the results of the federal election – particularly one reliant on absentee voting …

Armed Conflict At The Threshold, Deborah Pearlstein

Articles

Seventeen years into the United States’ engagement in what America has controversially understood as a global, non-international armed conflict against a shifting set of terrorist groups, a growing array of scholars has called for a reassessment of the significance of the “armed conflict” classification under international humanitarian law (IHL). The existence of an “armed conflict” has long been understood as a proxy on/off switch of inescapable importance. When an “armed conflict” exists, lethal targeting—without regard to particular self-defensive need or immediacy of threat—is permitted as a first resort. When an “armed conflict” does not exist, it is not. Challenging the …

The Test Case For Presidential War Power: North Korea And Trump, Deborah Pearlstein

Online Publications

My friend Marty Lederman has a characteristically useful post up about one of many important legal questions surrounding options in the current stand-off between the United States and North Korea. As he puts it: “Would it be lawful under the U.S. Constitution for Trump to use force, including nuclear weapons, as a ‘first strike’ against North Korea, in an effort to degrade that nation’s nuclear capabilities, absent evidence that Korea has already decided to strike the United States and is going to do so with no time for legislative deliberation?”

Revisiting "Special Needs" Theory Via Airport Searches, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

Controversy has raged since the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) introduced Advanced Imaging Technology, capable of producing detailed images of travelers' bodies, and "enhanced" pat frisks as part of everyday airport travel. In the face of challenges in the courts and in public discourse, the TSA has justified the heightened security measures as a necessary means to prevent terrorist attacks. The purpose of this Essay is to situate the Fourth Amendment implications of the new regime within a broader historical context. Most germane, after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) introduced sweeping new screening of air travelers in the 1960s and 1970s …

The Application Of The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act To An Action Against The French Railroad For Transporting Thousands Of Jews And Others To Their Deaths: Abrams V. Sncf, Malvina Halberstam

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Right To Self-Defense Once The Security Council Takes Action, Malvina Halberstam

Articles

No abstract provided.

Nationalism And The Right To Self-Determination: The Arab-Israeli Conflict, Malvina Halberstam

Articles

Self-determination is a slogan that has captured the imagination of people throughout the world. Numerous U.N. General Assembly resolutions have exalted self-determination, often above the fundamental rights specifically provided for in the U.N. Charter. Notwithstanding these resolutions, in practice, self-determination generally has been applied only to the dismemberment of colonial empires. Its universal application is neither possible nor desirable.

In the Arab-Israeli conflict, self-determination was never truly the issue. The conflict has been deliberately transformed into a claim for self-determination as a political tactic designed to gain the support of third world countries in the United Nations. The issues in …

The Myth That Israel's Presence In Judea And Samaria Is Comparable To Iraq's Presence In Kuwait, Malvina Halberstam

Articles

No abstract provided.

A Treaty Is A Treaty Is A Treaty, Malvina Halberstam

Articles

No abstract provided.