President/Executive Department Commons^™

Intellectual Property Or Modern Folklore? The Problem With Open Gaming Licenses In Tabletop Gaming, Rosie Midget

Seattle University Law Review

This Note addresses how courts and legislatures should address “Open Gaming Licenses” commonly attached to tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), which game publishers use to promote a false image of accessibility—misleading consumers and building goodwill from the misunderstanding. Part I discusses what TTRPGs are, including the defining features of the hobby and culture surrounding it, as well as the unique interplay between publishers and players. Part II explores the question of which elements in a TTRPG system may be subject to copyright protection. Part III examines these elements in practice using Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons and Dragons TTRPG as a …

Reaganomics: History Repeats Itself, But Louder, University Of Washington School Of Law

Rule of Law Initiative

Executive Summary

Ronald Reagan’s presidency (1981–1989) dramatically reshaped the American economic and institutional landscape. He championed “supply-side” economics, dubbed “Reaganomics.” Through sweeping tax cuts, deregulation, and a reallocation of federal funding priorities, Reagan shifted the burden of public services, especially in education and research, from government to individuals and private markets. Public universities saw deep cuts in federal support and increasingly turned to industry partnerships and commercialization to survive. Simultaneously, Reagan expanded defense research funding, fostering a close relationship between the government and elite research institutions. Innovation policy was formalized through the Bayh-Dole Act and the creation of …

All The President's Men: Congressional Appointment Restrictions At The Founding, Nicholas Holmes, Eric Walker

Michigan Law Review

The appointment power is exercised through a unique unicameral process. The Founders emphasized its distinctiveness from our system’s general bicameral legislative process, yet the power has largely been overlooked by scholars and jurists. This Note reveals that appointment discretion is the crucial, but understudied, flipside of the removal-power coin and is essential for presidential administration. Constitutional text, structure, and history indicate that there is a line beyond which congressional restrictions on who is eligible to hold federal office exceed Congress’s delegated powers and infringe on the president’s nomination and appointment power under Article II. The conventional wisdom on this line, …

Tidal Waves Of Mental Health Damage: Effects Of The 2024 U.S. Election, Mary Anne Layden

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

A Qualitative Study Exploring Senior Leaders’ Experiences And Perceptions In Addressing Workplace Sexual Harassment In The U.S. Federal Government: A Systems Perspective, Karen Jane Dean

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sexual harassment (SH) is a prevalent, costly, and often unreported problem in the U.S. Federal Government. Despite decades of research from multiple perspectives and recommendations to address SH, the problem persists and remains complex. While some researchers and U.S. Government agencies have called upon leaders to commit to eliminating workplace SH, others have suggested using an integrated conflict management system (ICMS) to manage the complexity, nuances, and conflicts. Even though there is a call for leadership to address SH, there is limited documentation in the literature about leaders’ experiences and perceptions in addressing the problem. Therefore, this qualitative study was …

Trump Attacks On Climate Science May Violate Numerous Federal Laws, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Starting on its first day on January 20, 2025, the second Trump administration has launched an unprecedented rollback of efforts to fight climate change. The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law’s Climate Backtracker already has 117 items.

Much of this is aimed at scientific research on climate change, or has the effect of inhibiting the conduct and dissemination of this research. Many of these actions may also violate federal laws.

This article discusses these actions, some of their legal implications, and the litigation challenges that have already been brought. It begins with actions that are specifically aimed at climate research, …

Canadian Security Intelligence Service (Csis), Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

April 24, 2025 presentation for Canada's GovInfo Day Spring 2025 hosted by Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and Internet Archive Canada. Provides information about the publicly available information resources produced by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) which is the Canadian Government's foremost national intelligence agency. Provides information about this agency's statutory organization, types of publicly available reports they produce, information about other Canadian government intelligence agencies, and parliamentary oversight of Canadian government intelligence operations. Lists additional resources for finding information about CSIS and explains the benefits of having access to these resources for users.

The Renaissance Of Private Law, Yotam Kaplan, Adi Libson, Gideon Parchomovsky

Northwestern University Law Review

Crisis is the new normal. Between global warming, the opioid pandemic, bursts of gun violence, and political instability fueled by fake news, it is hard to remember a time when we were not facing a major catastrophe. Still more troubling, there is a growing sense that our political and regulatory institutions are faltering in their ability to offer effective responses to the incoming crises. The rapid pace at which new problems emerge—together with growing political polarization—stymies regulatory and legislative action, resulting in an inability to address contemporary challenges.

Against this gloomy background, we posit an unlikely hero: private law. Recent …

Against Monetary Primacy, Yair Listokin, Rory Van Loo

Northwestern University Law Review

To reduce inflation, the Federal Reserve (Fed) raises interest rates. But every month with high interest rates increases the risk of a devastating recession. Recessions impose not only short-term pain in the form of widespread unemployment but also lifelong harm for many, as vulnerable workers and those who start their careers during a downturn never fully recover. Yet hiking interest rates is the centerpiece of U.S. inflation-fighting policy. When inflation is high, the Fed raises interest rates until inflation is tamed, regardless of the consequent sacrifices. We call this inflation-fighting paradigm “monetary primacy.” Despite its great risks, monetary primacy has …

Jenner & Block Llp V. Doj: Brief Of Amici Curiae 676 Law Professors In Support Of Plaintiff's Motion For Summary Judgment And For Declaratory And Permanent Injunctive Relief, Nicholas C. Howson, Leah Litman, Kyle D. Logue, Gabriel S. Mendlow, Leonard Niehoff, Richard Primus, Rebecca Scott

Appellate Briefs

Amici 676 law professors submit this brief in support of Plaintiff Jenner & Block’s Motion for Summary Judgment and for Declaratory and Permanent Injunctive Relief (the “Motion”) to emphasize the threat that the President’s Executive Order (the “Order”) presents to the independence and integrity of the legal profession, the rights of clients to seek redress in the courts, and, by extension, the rule of law. As experts in constitutional law, legal ethics, and the history of the legal profession, among other fields, we have a significant interest in ensuring that the principles of free speech, freedom of association, the right …

Brief Of Amici Curiae 676 Law Professors In Support Of Plaintiff’S Motion For Summary Judgment And For Declaratory And Permanent Injunctive Relief, Wilfred U. Codrington Iii, Rebecca Ingber, Rachel Landy, Jacob Noti-Victor, Alexander A. Reinert

Amicus Briefs

Amici 676 law professors submit this brief in support of Plaintiff Jenner & Block’s Motion for Summary Judgment and for Declaratory and Permanent Injunctive Relief (the “Motion”) to emphasize the threat that the President’s Executive Order (the “Order”) presents to the independence and integrity of the legal profession, the rights of clients to seek redress in the courts, and, by extension, the rule of law. As experts in constitutional law, legal ethics, and the history of the legal profession, among other fields, we have a significant interest in ensuring that the principles of free speech, freedom of association, the right …

Executive Watch: The Breadth And Depth Of The Trump Administration's Threat To The First Amendment, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

Given the Trump administration’s continued and varied assaults on the First Amendment, it is vital to monitor those attacks and then realize the gravity of the “sweeping and draconian sanctions ” imposed by unconstitutional executive fiat. Vigilance is especially important, as New York Times investigative reporter Michael S. Schmidt has noted, because “Mr. Trump has employed tactics including lawsuits, executive orders, regulations, dismissals from government jobs, withdrawal of security details and public intimidation to take on a wide range of individuals and institutions he views as having unfairly pursued him or sought to block his agenda.”

Mindful of such matters, …

Integrating Doctrine & Diversity Speaker Series: Executive Power In The Classroom: Addressing Project 2025 And Executive Orders In The Law School Curriculum 04-09-2025, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

The Final Frontier Of Federal Power: Understanding, Defining, And Enforcing “Necessary And Proper” To Enhance The General Welfare And Limit Federal Power, Thomas Ralph

Catholic University Law Review

This comment explores the long and inconsistent history of the Necessary and Proper Clause and its unique role as both a grant of power to Congress and a limit on the outer reach of the federal government. The federal government is in theory one of limited powers; however, this promise of the Constitution cannot be truly recognized without developing a robust framework for applying the Necessary and Proper Clause as a reliable source of federal power. After establishing the need for a framework, this comment provides five judicial decision rules that can be applied by trial and appellate courts to …

How We Broke Impeachment And Why We Need To Fix It: Presidential And Cabinet Level Impeachments, 1974–2024, Perry H. Apelbaum

Journal of Legislation

From 1974 to 2024, the House of Representatives initiated a total of 6 presidential and cabinet level impeachments—4 more than were brought in the Nation’s first 185 years. In the aftermath of the “gold standard” set during the Nixon impeachment inquiry, the process has experienced a steady decline in fairness and effectiveness and increase in partisanship, with the result being the weakening of our constitutional system of checks and balances.

During this period, impeachment proceedings have become more frequent and less meaningful, rarely led to disclosures of significant non-public information, and not resulted in conviction by the Senate The procedural …

Disagreement And Historical Argument Or How Not To Think About Removal, Andrea Scoseria Katz, Noah A. Rosenblum, Jane Manners

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Scholars have debated the reach of the President’s power to remove government officers for over one hundred years. This old fight is now suddenly urgent as President Trump asserts far-reaching powers to control the federal bureaucracy and the Supreme Court transforms Unitary Executive Theory into caselaw. Yet the scholarly case for an indefeasible presidential removal power has never been weaker.

This Essay continues an ongoing conversation about how to read some critical early republic evidence about removal. It briefly recapitulates the stakes of the disagreement before offering in-depth analyses of developments in Pennsylvania removal practice, including a reading of the …

Trump V. United States And The Half-Originalist Presidency, Christine Kexel Chabot

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Trump v. United States has been criticized for its ahistorical approach to presidential immunity. This Essay offers the first account of the historical mismatch between the Trump Court’s decision to immunize presidential removal power and Founding era conceptions of the presidency. Unlike the presumptive immunity that the Court recognized for most other official presidential acts, the immunity afforded for presidential removal power is absolute. The Court ruled that the President’s “unrestricted power of removal” can never be regulated by Congress or considered as evidence of wrongdoing, even when the President threatens removal to effectuate …

The Misuse Of Ratification-Era Sources By Unitary Executive Theorists, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This symposium essay suggests that, given an ostensibly originalist Supreme Court, the future depends on getting the past right. The unitary executive theory is approaching its political and doctrinal zenith in 2025, at the very moment it is approaching an evidentiary crisis. This essay details that crisis: a subset of misuses and misrepresentations of sources in the unitary executive scholarship. This subset focuses on serious misrepresentations of the Ratifications debates.

The Ratification debates appropriately have become the primary source of evidence for original public meaning, the dominant theory of originalism. The Ratification debates have always been a significant problem for …

Introduction: The Future Of Agency Independence Symposium Christopher J. Walker, Christopher J. Walker

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

On the Friday after the election last November, the student editors and I convened scholars from across the country at the University of Michigan Law School to discuss the future of agency independence. The goal was to center our discussion on the traditional unitary executive debate and then look beyond statutory restrictions on the President’s removal power to explore other contours of agency independence in modern regulatory governance. Those included the role of scientific expertise and politics in agency decisionmaking, the decisional independence of agency adjudicators, and the importance of a professionalized civil service. When we planned the symposium, we …

Presidential Regulation, Ganesh Sitaraman, Timothy Meyer

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article documents and analyzes the rise of a new mode of economic governance: presidential regulation. Today, the President regularly bypasses not only Congress but also the executive branch’s own administrative agencies and directly imposes sweeping new economic regulations. President Biden, for instance, created new regulatory regimes governing producers of artificial-intelligence technologies, companies that trade […]

Conservative Caution V. Progressive Originalism: How Justices Barrett And Jackson Are Paving Their Own Paths On The Court, David Rudenstine, Michael Waldman, Eric Freedman, Haiyun Damon-Feng, William D. Araiza, Mark Anthony Frassetto, Jake Meiseles, Michael Pollack, Linda Greenhouse, Earl M. Maltz

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The Conservative Caution v. Progressive Originalism symposium, hosted by the Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights and Social Justice on March 7, 2025, brings together leading constitutional scholars to examine the emerging judicial philosophies of Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Through three expert panels—presidential immunity, gun rights, and judicial ideology—the symposium analyzes how both Justices are shaping contemporary originalist discourse from opposing ends of the ideological spectrum. Panelists explore the Supreme Court’s watershed decision in Trump v. United States (2024), emphasizing its unprecedented expansion of presidential immunity and its implications for separation of powers and democratic accountability. Discussions …

Saving Agency Adjudication, Aaron L. Nielson, Christopher J. Walker, Melissa F. Wasserman

Articles

When discussing the federal judiciary, commentators typically fixate on the 800 or so “Article III” judges who are nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and enjoy life tenure and salary protection. Yet most federal adjudication does not take place in federal courthouses at all. Instead, it occurs in nondescript hearing rooms in administrative agencies—if not telephonically. Indeed, the more than 12,000 agency adjudicators scattered across the federal government collectively issue millions of decisions per year on subjects ranging from Social Security and veterans benefits to immigration and patent rights. In recent years, however, scholars and agency adjudicators have …

Disqualification, Immunity, And The Presidency, Gillian E. Metzger

Faculty Scholarship

Trump v. Anderson and Trump v. United States were two momentous decisions in a momentous Supreme Court term. Sharing then former — and now current — President Trump as a party, the decisions hold important implications for presidential power and accountability.

Anderson arose from a suit brought by Colorado voters to challenge Trump’s inclusion on the Republican primary ballot in that state. They argued that Trump organized and incited the mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and disrupted the Electoral College vote count and certification. In their view, this disqualified him from serving as President under section …

The Misuse Of Ratification-Era Sources By Unitary Executive Theorists, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium essay suggests that, given an ostensibly originalist Supreme Court, the future depends on getting the past right. The unitary executive theory is approaching its political and doctrinal zenith in 2025, at the very moment it is approaching an evidentiary crisis. This essay details that crisis: a subset of misuses and misrepresentations of sources in the unitary executive scholarship. This subset focuses on serious misrepresentations of the Ratifications debates.

The Ratification debates appropriately have become the primary source of evidence for original public meaning, the dominant theory of originalism. The Ratification debates have always been a significant problem for …

Get Your Act Together: The Alternative Fines Act In Federal Prosecutions Of Corporate Environmental Crimes, Josiah B. Harmar

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Invasive Species From Sea To Shining Sea: An Exploration Of Different Government Responses To Invasive Species In The United States, Caroline G. Nelson

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

The Trump Administration’S Recent Removals To El Salvador Violate The Prohibition On Transfer To Torture, Rebecca Ingber, Scott Roehm

Online Publications

Several of our colleagues have already provided excellent analyses of the fast-evolving legal and factual questions presented by President Donald Trump’s pretextual and abusive invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to transfer to El Salvador 238 Venezuelan men who it alleges are members of the Tren de Aragua gang. We are writing to flag a separate issue that this case has created, one that applies to anyone removed from the United States under any authority: the administration is sending people to a country where there is a quite significant risk they will be abused. Whatever the authority the administration might …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Re-Imagining Tomorrow: A Technology, Innovation Law, And Ethics Symposium On Addictive Technology And Children, Margaret Chon

Seattle University Law Review

In this Foreword, Professor Margaret Chon introduces Seattle University's Technology, Innovation Law, and Ethics (TILE) program, the 2024 TILE Symposium, and Dr. Gaia Bernstein’s Unwired: Gaining Control Over Addictive Technologies.

Keynote Address: The Movement To Protect Kids From Addictive Technologies, Gaia Bernstein

Seattle University Law Review

In this keynote address, I describe my personal journey starting with a school outreach program I created in 2017 to address technology overuse among kids. While I initially advocated for self-help methods, I grew to recognize that the tech industry bore responsibility. This realization led me to write Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, which focused on collective action to pressure the tech industry to redesign its addictive products.

I then describe the movement to control addictive technologies and protect kids, which has gained momentum since the end of the pandemic. This movement combines grassroots parent activism with legal-political action. …