President/Executive Department Commons^™

Health Choice Or Health Coercion? The Osha Emergency Temporary Standard Covid-19 Vaccination Mandates: Ax Or Vax, Savannah Snyder

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

Latinxs Reshaping Law & Policy In The U.S. South, Luz E. Herrera, Pilar M. Hernández-Escontrías

Faculty Scholarship

This article addresses the key law and policy levers affecting Latinxs in what the U.S. Census Bureau designates as the South. Since the rise of the Latinx population from the 1980s onward, few legal scholars and researchers have participated in a sustained dialogue about how law and policy affects Latinxs living in the South. In response to this gap in legal research, this article provides an overview of the major law and policy challenges and opportunities for Latinxs in this U.S. region. Part II examines the geopolitical landscape of the South with special focus on the enduring legacy of Jim …

So Sue Me: How The Justice Department Can Protect Children By Suing Indigent Defenders, Joshua Perry

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Tech And Authoritarianism: How The People’S Republic Of China Is Using Data To Control Hong Kong And Why The U.S. Is Vulnerable, Bryce Neary

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

The aim of this article is to analyze and compare current events in the People's Republic of China and the United States to discuss the moral dilemmas that arise when establishing the boundary between national security interests and individual privacy rights. As we continue to intertwine our lives with technology, it has become increasingly important to establish clear privacy rights. The question then becomes: at what point should individuals sacrifice their rights for what the government considers the "greater good" of the country?

Further, this article analyzes the development of U.S. privacy law and its relationship to national security, technology, …

Fixing America's Broken Democracy, Erwin Chemerinsky

Lewis & Clark Law Review

No abstract provided.

Trump’S Legacy: The Long-Term Risks To American Democracy, Michael Vitiello

Lewis & Clark Law Review

While President Trump was extreme in his contempt for legal and political norms, his presidency was consistent with the direction in which the Republican Party has moved over the past several decades. Strategies put in place by Trump and other Republicans, along with institutional aspects of our country’s “democracy,” assure the Republican Party’s continued, outsized control despite Trump’s failure to achieve a second term.

This Article reviews Trump and his Administration’s contempt for political norms, explores the Republican Party’s hard turn to the right, and discusses how the Republicans have been able to hold onto power greater than one would …

The Electoral Count Mess: The Electoral Count Act Of 1887 Is Unconstitutional, And Other Fun Facts (Plus A Few Random Academic Speculations) About Counting Electoral Votes, Jack Beermann, Gary Lawson

FIU Law Review

In this essay, and in light of the controversy that arose in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, we explain the constitutional process for counting electoral votes. In short, every four years, the Twelfth Amendment requires the President of the Senate (usually the Vice President of the United States) to open certificates provided by state presidential electors and count the votes contained therein. The Constitution allows no role for Congress in this process, and thus, the provisions of the Electoral Count Act purporting to grant Congress the power, by concurrent resolution, to reject a state’s electoral votes, is unconstitutional. …

Making Appointment The Means Of Presidential Removal Of Officers Of The United States, David M. Driesen

Lewis & Clark Law Review

This Article examines the relationship between appointment and removal of officers of the United States, focusing on the administrations of Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump. These administrations’ use of appointment and removal underlines the potential tension between political removal accomplished without Senate approval of a successor and the Constitution’s goal of securing the rule of law.

To remedy these issues, this Article proposes that Congress pass a statute forbidding presidential removal of an agency head (and other Senate-approved appointees) until the President nominates a qualified successor or until the Senate confirms a successor. Integrating Appointments Clause …

Tightwire Of National Interests And Publicity In The Evolved Process Of Democratization And Constitutional Transformation: Lessons From Taiwan, Hsin-Hsuan Lin

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

Achieving an optimal balance between government secrecy and democratic accountability has led to long-standing questions in the discussion of contemporary constitutionalism. To address the complex contemporary phenomenon of government secrecy within a democratic society, a more in-depth understanding of its tension with democratic accountability and transparency is essential. This article provides a descriptive overview of Taiwan's legal system, its legal implications in relation to government secrecy, and its normative implications. The article begins with a historical background of Taiwan's legal system, focusing on legal reform as it relates to government secrecy. The article investigates the complex interactions between the administrative, …

Litigating The Separation Of Powers, Elizabeth Earle Beske

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Defending The Defenders: Why Bureaucratic Independence Is A Necessary Supplement To Judicial Defense Of Democracy The Specter Of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling Of Presidential Power, Andrea Scoseria Katz

Scholarship@WashULaw

A familiar story is being observed in countries ranging from Brazil to Australia, the United States, and Poland, as elected executives deploy a populist threat narrative to politicize the rule of law and entrench themselves in power. Out of the academy, a growing literature on democratic “backsliding” or “decline” proposes a menu of “guardrails” for shoring up democracy from gradual collapse. Broadly, these guardrails fall under two headings: I call one judicial, the other bureaucratic. The former looks to the power of judicial review, under which courts may invalidate enactments that threaten, not just the Constitution, but the very democratic …

Revisiting America's Guardrails The Constitution And Democratic Erosion Symposium, Andrea Scoseria Katz

Scholarship@WashULaw

A familiar story is being observed in countries ranging from Brazil to Australia, the United States, and Poland as elected executives deploy a populist threat narrative to politicize the rule of law and entrench themselves in power. Out of the academy, a growing literature proposes a menu of “guardrails” for shoring up democracy from backsliding or decline. Some see guardrails in society and culture, calling for rebuilding civic norms of tolerance. Others call for stricter rules in administering elections, to prevent undue influence. Others call for greater judicial intervention, tasking courts with striking down enactments that threaten the constitution or …

How Biden Could Keep Filling The Federal Circuit Court Vacancies, Carl Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

In October 2020, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speculated that the fifty-four talented, extremely conservative, and exceptionally young, appellate court judges whom then-President Donald Trump and two relatively similar Grand Old Party (GOP) Senate majorities appointed had left the federal appeals courts “out of whack.” Problematic were the many deleterious ways in which Trump and both of the upper chamber majorities in the 115th and 116th Senate undermined the courts of appeals, which are the courts of last resort for practically all lawsuits, because the United States Supreme Court hears so few appeals. The nomination and confirmation processes which Trump …

Autonomous Weapons Systems And The Procedural Accounta- Bility Gap, Afonso Seixas-Nunes

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The development and well-established principles of Internationla Humanitarian Law have been progressively establishing limits to the means and methods of warfare. Those principles and rules are necessarily applicable to future autonomous weapon systems (AWS), but questions regarding liability for violations of IHL caused by AWS have been looming the international debate. This article has two parts. The first part aims to identify a technical dimension of AWS that has been neglected by international lawyers: States responsibility for IHL violations caused by errors in AWS’ software. This article argues that “errors” can neither be identified with “malfunctions” nor attributed to human …

Sufficiently Judicial: The Need For A Universal Ethics Rule On Attorney Behavior In Legislative Impeachment Trials, Joshua E. Kastenberg

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

In assessing an ethics, rule-based prohibition against New Jersey governmental attorneys representing clients against the state for matters the state had previously assigned to them, the state supreme court noted: “In our representative form of government, it is essential that the conduct of public officials and employees shall hold the respect and confidence of the people.”

In the beginning of 2020, the United States Senate held an impeachment trial to determine whether former President Donald J. Trump had committed offenses forwarded by the House of Representatives. A U.S. Senate trial, much like state senate trials, is both judicial and political …

Baby & Bathwater: Standing In Election Cases After 2020, Steven J. Mulroy

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The current consensus among commentators is that the flood of cases challenging the 2020 presidential election results was almost completely meritless. This consensus is correct as to the ultimate result, but not as to the courts’ treatment of standing. In their (understandable) zeal to reject sometimes frivolous attempts to overturn a legitimate election and undermine public confidence in our electoral system, many courts were too quick to rule that plaintiffs lacked standing. These rulings resulted in unjustified sweeping rulings that voters were not injured even if their legal votes were diluted by states accepting illegal votes; that campaigns did not …

Court Packing Is A Chimera, Brian L. Frye

Cardozo Law Review

The dream of the 1930s is alive in Washington. Democrats see Republicans hemorrhaging voters as Trump struggles with the economy and the pandemic and are salivating at the prospect of retaking not only the White House, but also the Senate. Of course, you should never sell a bearskin until you’ve caught the bear. But even a blowout victory can’t get Democrats the prize they really want, a Supreme Court majority. So, in back-to-the-future fashion, many progressives are pushing the idea of court packing. After all, in politics, rules are made to be broken.

A Bolt Of Lightning: Measuring The Impact Of Modern Transitions On The Supreme Court, Daniel Kiel

Cardozo Law Review

Lightning struck on September 18, 2020. In a year in which so many unimaginable events had unfolded and were unfolding, the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sent shock waves not only through the nation’s legal community, but throughout the country. Ginsburg, a champion of women’s rights as both lawyer and Justice, the multi-time survivor of cancer, the Court’s tiny, surprising, and notorious rock star, passed away at a precarious moment. Aside from the existential challenge presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation was 46 days from a presidential election. Given that the responsibility of nominating Supreme Court Justices fell …

The Place Of The Presidency In Historical Time, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay arises from a symposium based on Jack Balkin’s book, The Cycles of Constitutional Time, which argues that America’s constitutional development is marked by patterns of decline and renewal. I contend that the presidency today has become endowed with outsized expectations borne of popular frustrations with a centuries-old document that is desperately in need of updating. As a result, Presidents enjoy imbalanced and dangerous power to initiate legal reform or stymie it. Going forward, three dynamics are worth watching. First, noisy signals coming from performative transformation can obscure the true source and scope of legal changes initiated by a …

Biden Administration U.S. Space Force Policy Literature, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides details on U.S. Space Force policy literature produced by the Biden Administration during its first eight months. Includes announcements that the Biden Administration will continue this new armed services branch begun during the Trump Administration. Features congressional testimony of Biden Administration officials such as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Wilson and Air Force Space Command leader General James Dickinson, the text of Space Force's 2021 Digital Force Vision document, congressionally approved FY 2022 space force budget figures, congressional committee comments and report requirements contained in emerging defense spending legislation, the emergence of collaboration between Space Force and universities such as …

How Biden Began Building Back Better The Federal Bench, Carl Tobias

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

In October 2020, Democratic presidential nominee Joseph Biden famously expressed regret that the fifty-four accomplished, conservative, and young federal appellate court jurists and the 174 comparatively similar district court judges whom former– Republican President Donald Trump and the recent pair of analogous Grand Old Party Senate majorities in the 115th and 116th Congress appointed had left the courts of appeals and the district courts “out of whack.” Lamentable were the numerous detrimental ways in which President Trump and these Republican Senate majorities attempted to undercut the appeals courts and district courts, which actually constitute the tribunals of last resort in …

Crisis Management Lessons From The Clinton Administration's Implementation Of Presidential Decision Directive 56, Leonard R. Hawley

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Drawing on personal experience, the author asks what the current administration can learn from the Clinton administration’s implementation of Presidential Decision Directive 56, examines the real-world application of the directive during the Clinton administration and the pitfalls of its agency-centric successor during the Bush administration, and identifies recurring problems and best practices for successfully responding to current global crises.

Partisan Or Precedent: The History Of Nominating Supreme Court Judges In Presidential Election Years, Hattie Jefferies

Helms School of Government Undergraduate Law Review

No abstract provided.

Destructive Federal Decentralization, David Fontana

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article—written for a symposium hosted by the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal—focuses on the efforts by the Trump administration to relocate federal officials outside of Washington to reduce the capacity of the federal government. Federalism and the separation of powers are usually the twin pillars of structural constitutional law. Locating federal officials outside of Washington— federal decentralization—has been an additional tool of diffusing power that has started to gain some scholarly attention. These debates largely focus on structural constitutional law as constructive—as improving the capacity and operation of the federal and state governments. The power …

United Nations At 75 And The Challenges Facing International Law, Ved Nanda

Pace International Law Review

On September 21, 2020, the Member States celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. In the Declaration marking the occasion, world leaders recounted the achievements of the body, including catalyzing decolonization, promoting and protecting human rights, working to eradicate disease, helping mitigate dozens of conflicts, and saving lives through humanitarian action. They also enumerated challenges the world faces, such as “growing inequality, poverty, hunger, armed conflicts, terrorism, insecurity, climate change, and pandemics.” These challenges, the Declaration said, are interconnected and can only be addressed through reinvigorated multilateralism, which, it emphasized, “is not an option but a …

The Constitution, Covid-19, And Civil Disobedience: Federalism In Flames And The Slippery Slope To Socialism, Savannah Snyder

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

Our Constitution has been devastatingly corrupted from its original design and vision amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Governors usurped authority in the name of crisis mitigation. Our unalienable rights have been macerated and pulverized by droves of executive orders, each delivering a calamitous blow to the integrity of the American republican framework. Socialized medicine is on the horizon as our compliance is coerced. Conventional civil disobedience has been regulatorily revoked. We have succumbed to the decrees of depraved men who maintain that education, religious expression, and pursuits of happiness can be invalidated by whatever transgressions the state deems necessary. For the …

The Error Of The Paquete Habana: U.S. Naval Forces In The Safe Harbor Of Commander-In-Chief Discretion And The Law Of War, T. Nelson Collier

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Gundy V. United States: How Justice Gorsuch’S Dissent And Changing Judicial Philosophy In Federal Courts May Lead To A Revived Nondelegation Doctrine And Diminish The Purpose Of The Administrative Procedure Act, Zachary Pfrang Olvera

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

A Concept Of Shared Principles And The Constitutional Homogeneity In Europe: The Case Of Subsidiarity, Volker Roeben

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The article explores the concept of subsidiarity as a shared legal principle in both the European Union (EU) and German law, focusing on its role in ensuring the accountability of central authority while safeguarding the autonomy of peripheral legislatures. It highlights the convergence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) on a rationale of legality, aimed at preventing central overreach into peripheral competences. Despite this alignment, the article notes divergent outcomes in the application of subsidiarity, with the FCC more frequently invalidating federal legislation compared to the CJEU's more restrained …

Prosecuting Executive Branch Wrongdoing, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

Attorney General William Barr's handling of Robert Mueller's Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election was undeniably controversial and raised meaningful questions regarding the impartiality of the Department of Justice. Yet, Barr's conduct, which occurred at the conclusion of the Mueller investigation, was merely the caboose at the end of a series of controversies that were coupled together from the outset of the investigation. Ensnarled in dissonance from its inception, the Mueller investigation was dogged by controversies that ultimately compromised its legitimacy.

Public trust of criminal investigations of executive branch wrongdoing requires prosecutorial independence. To …