President/Executive Department Commons^™

A Heartbeat Away: Popular Culture’S Role In Teaching Presidential Succession, Jay L. Wendland

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The role of popular culture in civic education is important. Many television viewers learn about the American political process through various dramatized depictions. The 25th Amendment has often received much attention from Hollywood, as it provides writers, directors, and producers a tool with which to further dramatize presidential succession. Through the television shows West Wing, Designated Survivor, Commander in Chief, Madam Secretary, and Political Animals, viewers are exposed to storylines revolving around the 25th Amendment. By viewing these dramatized versions of presidential succession, viewers are better able to understand the process and political science instructors …

Recalibrating Interbranch Bargaining, Emily Berman

William & Mary Law Review

To fulfill its constitutional functions, Congress must have access to information from within the executive branch. Whether it is assessing the need to amend the authorities of administrative agencies, determining whether to fund executive branch programs, or investigating allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse, Congress can act responsibly only if it is able to compile an accurate picture of executive branch activities. When executive branch officials resist these requests—for either legitimate or problematic reasons—the resulting conflict is traditionally resolved amicably through interbranch negotiations, not inter-branch litigation. Indeed, courts heard a total of four congressional-executive information disputes in the nation’s first …

Environmental Law In Trump’S Second Term, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Donald Trump’s victory in the Nov. 5, 2024 election and Republican control of both the Senate and the House (if that happens) will mean a reversal of much of the environmental progress under the Biden administration, just as the 2016 election reversed large parts of the Obama environmental legacy. However, rapid advances in the technology and economics of clean energy have created a momentum that can be slowed but not stopped. States can adopt their own stronger standards despite what happens in Washington, with a few exceptions, and can use their procurement power and their pension funds’ investment clout to …

Forgive And Forget: Honoring Full And Unconditional Pardons, Philip P. Houle

Maine Law Review

With few words, the Great Bard summarized the popular understanding of full and unconditional pardons as unrestrained acts of mercy which approximate, as best as humans can, the divine ability to forgive and forget. Perhaps in light of that sentiment, the common law held that a royal pardon blotted out any guilt or infamy resulting from commission of a crime, as well as the legal existence of the conviction itself. Following much discussion of the issue, the Supreme Court adopted the forgive-and-forget rule in a series of decisions following the Civil War. Yet, despite clear common law and Supreme Court …

Stand-Ins: Causes And Consequences Of Temporary Leadership, Anne Joseph O’Connell

BYU Law Review

Hafen Lecture, BYU Law School, September 13, 2023.

Federal Election Commission And Indiana Secretary Of State Campaign Finance Information Resoures, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

This presentation covers campaign finance information resources produced by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and Indiana Secretary of State. It describes how these agencies began, details how they oversee and regulate U.S. federal and Indiana state elections, and documents contributions made by individuals, organizations, political parties, and political action committees to individual candidates and organizations. Reporting documentation on these election races is also included.

Not Just Mercy: Governors Should Use The Executive Clemency Power As A Corrective Tool For Mass Incarceration, Laura Tierney

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that state governors should revive the use of executive clemency as a corrective tool to address mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on communities of color. Executive clemency, which includes pardons, commutations, and sentence reductions, offers a means to provide immediate relief and promote social justice. The author emphasizes the historical roots of clemency as a check on the criminal justice system and advocates for its use to reduce prison populations and counteract the legacy of punitive policies.

Law School News: From Ideas To Political Action 10-2024, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Selected U.S. Government Statistical Agencies And Their Data, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides introductory and detailed overview of U.S. Government agencies statistics. Includes examples of how an individual U.S. law authorizes government agencies to compile statistics for particular congressional committees and the general public. Statistics cover topics such as demography, defense, foreign assistance, economic growth, criminal justice, energy, Social Security, and Medicare.

Scla 521 Ai In Society, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides access to information resources on societal impacts of artificial intelligence from multiple libraries databases covering multiple disciplines including government information resources.

What Congress Needs To Break The Immigration Reform Stalemate, Maryam T. Stevenson

Catholic University Law Review

This article provides a policy proposal for an immigration reform package that could be successful in the modern-day Congress. It is the second article of a series that began with an analysis of why immigration reform has been unsuccessful over the past 30 years despite bipartisan support. That article argued that polarization combined with the framing of immigration by the media and political elites has caused the public to view immigration as a one-dimensional policy largely defined by border concerns, when in reality, it is a robust policy area that encompasses a number of various issues (i.e. family immigration, skilled …

Presidents, Congress, And Classified Information: The Constitutional Limitations And Processes Required To Declassify Information, Nick Dunard

Catholic University Law Review

On August 8 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Resort. The search uncovered hundreds of documents bearing various classification and governmental markings. On June 8, 2023, Trump was indicted in the Southern District of Florida on thirty-seven counts of unlawful retention of national defense information. Almost immediately after the search, the former President and his allies advanced a theory that Trump’s retention of classified documents was permissible because he had declassified the documents before leaving office on January 20, 2021. The former President has repeatedly mentioned these arguments in both …

The President’S Authority Over Cross-Border Data Flows, Anupam Chander, Paul M. Schwartz

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article reveals a surprising expansion of presidential authority to control goods and services available in the United States because of the information flows that they entail. Such authority is grounded in laws focused on protecting national security, here with respect to foreign surveillance and propaganda. But broad executive powers over our information infrastructure raises significant concerns with respect to core American values of free expression and due process. Worries about unfettered foreign access to data should be coupled with worries about unfettered executive control over our information services and technologies.

The Making Of Presidential Administration, Ashraf Ahmed, Lev Menand, Noah Rosenblum

Faculty Scholarship

Today, the idea that the President possesses at least some constitutional authority to direct administrative action is accepted by the courts, Congress, and the legal academy. But it was not always so. For most of American history — indeed until relatively recently — Presidents derived their authority over the administrative state largely from statute. Any role for the White House in agency rulemaking or adjudication had to be legally specified. Scholars mostly agree about when this change occurred. But the dominant shared narrative — exemplified by then-Professor Elena Kagan’s seminal article Presidential Administration — is Whig history. It offers a …

Federal Powers In A Pandemic, Julia Whitehead, Braden Leach

Georgia State University Law Review

This Article examines how the young federal government responded to infectious diseases to ascertain the limits of federal powers and analyzes how federal powers were used in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“No Superior But God”: History, Post Presidential Immunity, And The Intent Of The Framers, Trace M. Maddox

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This essay is directly responsive to one of the most pressing issues currently before the courts of the United States: the question of whether former Presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for acts they committed in office. Building upon the recent ruling of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in United States v. Trump, 91 F.4th 1173 (D.C. Cir. 2024) this essay argues that the clear answer to that question is a resounding “no”.

Former President Trump, who has now appealed the D.C. Circuit’s ruling to the Supreme Court, contends that post-presidential criminal immunity is …

Implied Consent In Administrative Adjudication, Grace Moore

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Article III of the Constitution mandates that judges exercising the federal judicial power receive life tenure and that their pay not be diminished. Nonetheless, certain forms of adjudication have always taken place outside of Article III—in state courts, military tribunals, territorial courts, and administrative tribunals. Administrative law judges, employed by various federal administrative agencies, decide thousands of cases each year. A vast majority of the cases they decide deal with public rights, which generally include claims involving federal statutory rights or cases in which the federal government is a party. With litigant consent, however, the Supreme Court has upheld administrative …

Navigating Section Three From Griffin’S Case To The Case Of Couy Griffin: Who Should Decide Its Longstanding Questions?, Austin Carpenter

BYU Law Review

Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment was a long-dormant constitutional provision enacted to bar former Confederates from political office. Then, as a result of the shocking political violence at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, Section Three suddenly found itself resurrected into the national political discussion. Scholars and courts are now grappling with Section Three’s original meaning and modern application to those politicians and office holders whose conduct led to the events on January 6 — events that interrupted the peaceful transfer of power and left a stain on the United States’ democratic tradition.

Yet, use of Section …

Partisanship Creep, Katherine Shaw

Northwestern University Law Review

It was once well settled and uncontroversial—reflected in legislative enactments, Executive Branch practice, judicial doctrine, and the broader constitutional culture—that the Constitution imposed limits on government partisanship. This principle was one instantiation of a broader set of rule of law principles: that law is not merely an instrument of political power; that government resources should not be used to further partisan interests, or to damage partisan adversaries.

For at least a century, each branch of the federal government has participated in the development and articulation of this nonpartisanship principle. In the legislative realm, federal statutes beginning with the 1883 Pendleton …

The Supreme Court And The Federalist Society Network: The Conversation That Determined Whose Vote Counts, Deborah Toscano

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article examines the role of the Federalist Society Network (FSN) in shaping the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which invalidated Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The FSN's legal framework, emphasizing state sovereignty and the Tenth Amendment, influenced the Court's expansion of the "equal sovereignty" doctrine, leading to the dismantling of a key provision of the VRA. This decision reflects a broader shift in federalism, prioritizing state autonomy over federal oversight in voting rights.

When Governors Prioritize Individual Freedom Over Public Health: Tort Liability For Government Failures, Barbara Pfeffer Billauer Jd, Ma, Phd

Journal of Law and Health

Over half the states have enacted laws diminishing or curtailing the rights of the executive branch (legislatures or governors) to enact laws to preserve, protect, or safeguard public health in the wake of the COVID-19 emergency. Governor DeSantis, of Florida, for example, effectively banned mask mandates in schools during the high point of the epidemic – based on flawed science and erroneous data – and now wants to make that response permanent. The rules effectuating this Executive Order were enacted under an emergency order finding a threat to public health. Nevertheless, the response promulgated by the Florida Department of Health …

Separation Of Powers By Contract: How Collective Bargaining Reshapes Presidential Power, Nicholas Handler

Faculty Scholarship

This Article demonstrates for the first time how civil servants check and restrain presidential power through collective bargaining. The executive branch is typically depicted as a top-down hierarchy. The President, as chief executive, issues directives with vast implications for federal policy. Usually, the tenured bureaucracy of civil servants below him follow these directives. Occasionally, when the President’s policies appear corrupt or ill-advised, bureaucrats may illicitly “resist” them. This presumed top-down structure shapes many influential critiques of the modern administrative state. Proponents of a strong President decry civil servants as an unelected “deep state” usurping popular will. Skeptics of presidential power …

Searching Govinfo.Gov/, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

This U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) database provides access to information legal, legislative, and regulatory information produced on multiple subjects by the U.S. Government. Content includes congressional bills, congressional committee hearings and prints (studies), reports on legislation, the text of laws, regulations, and executive orders and multiple U.S. Government information resources covering subjects from accounting to zoology.

Worthless Checks? Clemency, Compassionate Release, And The Finality Of Life Without Parole, Daniel Pascoe

Northwestern University Law Review

Life without parole (LWOP) sentences are politically popular in the United States because, on their face, they claim to hold prisoners incarcerated until they die, with zero prospect of release via the regularized channel of parole. However, this view is procedurally shortsighted. After parole there is generally another remedial option for lessening or abrogating punishment: executive clemency via pardons and commutations. Increasingly, U.S. legal jurisdictions also provide for the possibility of compassionate release for lifers, usually granted by a parole board.

On paper, pardon, commutation, and compassionate release are thus direct challenges to the claim that an LWOP sentence will …

Why Outlaw Laws?: An Argument For A Probationary Period For Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems Under Meaningful Human Control., Katherine E. Vuyk

The University of Cincinnati Intellectual Property and Computer Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Ending Exemption 5 Expansion: Toward A Narrower Interpretation Of Foia’S Exemption For Inter- And Intra-Agency Memorandums, Ryan W. Miller

Fordham Law Review

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) creates a judicially enforceable right to access almost any record that a federal agency creates or obtains. Its crafters aimed to strike a careful balance in promoting disclosure of government records to increase transparency while still protecting the confidentiality of certain information. Although any person can request an agency record, FOIA’s nine exemptions allow agencies to withhold records if certain conditions are met. 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5) permits agencies to withhold “inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters” that would normally be privileged in civil discovery. Through this exemption, Congress sought to prevent FOIA from …

War Powers Reform: A Skeptical View, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

Debates about war powers focus too much on legal checks and on the President’s power to start wars. Congressional checks before and during crises work better than many reform-ists suppose, and there are ways to improve Congress’s political checking without substantial legal reform.

Condensing The Alphabet Soup: Missed Administrative Rulemaking Concerns In U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission V. Alpine Securities Corporation, David Davani

Cardozo Law Review

For decades, the political landscape in the United States, characterized by deadlock in Congress and increasingly polarized relations among the country’s major political parties, has put the responsibility of keeping the government functioning in the hands of the administrative state. An absence of regular, substantive legislation (and a President willing to sign the bills given to her by Congress into law) leaves the advancement of meaningful policy to the rulemaking functions of federal executive agencies. Agency rules, developed pursuant to Congressional commands, aim to ensure that private industries will keep air and water clean, make sure drugs are safe, and, …

Major Questions About Presidentialism: Untangling The “Chain Of Dependence” Across Administrative Law, Jodi L. Short, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

A contradiction about the role of the president has emerged between the Roberts Court’s Article II jurisprudence and its Major Questions Doctrine jurisprudence. In its appointment and removal decisions, the Roberts Court claims that the president is the “most democratic and politically accountable official in Government” because the president is “directly accountable to the people through regular elections,” an audacious new interpretation of Article II; and it argues that tight presidential control of agency officials lends democratic legitimacy to the administrative state. We identify these twin arguments about the “directly accountable president” and the “chain of dependence” as the foundation …

What Roosevelt Did To Brown V. Board Of Education, Or Race And Court Packing, Jill M. Fraley

Scholarly Articles

Roughly one-third of American schools remain segregated. Scholars have offered a variety of explanations, mostly social and cultural, but sometimes legal, for why desegregation did not proceed effectively after Brown v. Board of Education. This Article articulates a less expected and previously undocumented cause: President Roosevelt's prior attempt at court packing slowed--even derailed--desegregation.

The story of what Roosevelt's court packing did to make the work of integration harder is a cautionary tale, particularly for those who want to alter the U.S. Supreme Court now in furtherance of a modern cause. The only reasonable route for reforming the Supreme Court must …