President/Executive Department Commons^™

Perfecting Our Submission? Mann And Trump, Ruffin And Roberts, Joseph S. Miller

Scholarly Works

Presidential power is vast, both under law and in practice. Who holds presidents accountable, and by what means? Courts wrestle with these intertwined questions of power and accountability. The majority opinion in the 2024 presidential immunity case, Trump v. United States, is eerily resonant, rhetorically, with a notorious judgment enhancing one person’s power over others by shielding that power utterly from criminal-law accountability. That judgment, from 1829, is Judge Thomas Ruffin’s infamous slavery-law opinion for the North Carolina Supreme Court in State v. Mann. I juxtapose the two opinions, which share jarringly similar claims about the nature of power, rule, …

“Modernizing Regulatory Review”: A Short-Lived Abandonment Of More Than Four Decades Of Regulatory Review And Benefit-Cost Analysis, Richard Belzer

FIU Law Review

"President Biden’s Modernizing Regulatory Review (MRR) initiative fundamentally altered regulatory procedures, practices, and centralized oversight that had been in place since 1981 when they were formalized by President Reagan in Executive Order 12,291. MRR proceeded in three phases. First, a Memorandum issued on President Biden’s first day in office telegraphing the broad outlines of the plan. Second, more than two years later, an Executive Order codifying the MRR memorandum was issued, combined with implementation guidance issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). And third, OMB guidance on the conduct of regulatory BCA was radically revised, clearly with an …

Trump Has A Point On Trade, William Snape

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The Great Unsettling: Administrative Governance After Loper Bright, Cary Coglianese, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

“Chevron is overruled.” These three words surely captured more attention than any others in the U.S. Supreme Court’s thirty-five-page opinion in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. For forty years, the Chevron doctrine had been virtually synonymous with administrative law. Now that the Court has taken a step that many scholars thought unfathomable even just a few years ago, speculation abounds about the possible downstream impacts of Loper Bright on both what agencies will be able to do in the future and how lower courts will respond when reviewing agency action. The vast majority of early expert commentaries suggest …

The Solicitor General, Consistency, And Credibility, Margaret H. Lemos, Deborah A. Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article offers the first comprehensive look at cases in which the Solicitor General (SG) rejects a legal argument offered on behalf of the United States in prior litigation. Such reversals have received considerable attention in recent years, as shifts in presidential administrations have produced multiple high-profile “flip-flops”—as the Justices sometimes call them—by the SG. Even those observers who defend the SG, including veterans of the office, caution that inconsistency in legal argument poses a threat to the SG’s credibility with the Court. Our goal is to better understand the circumstances that lead the SG to change its position on …

Presidential Regulation, Timothy Meyer, Ganesh Sitaraman

Faculty Scholarship

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 in or hold the personal information of U.S. citizens, and companies that can increase the production of energy-efficient equipment and technology. During his first term, President Trump regulated the kinds of technologies that U.S. telecommunications companies can buy and sell, placed restrictions on the electrical …

The Solicitor General, Consistency, And Credibility, Margaret H. Lemos, Deborah A. Widiss

Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers the first comprehensive look at cases in which the Solicitor General (SG) rejects a legal argument offered on behalf of the United States in prior litigation. Such reversals have received considerable attention in recent years, as shifts in presidential administrations have produced multiple high-profile “flip-flops”—as the Justices sometimes call them—by the SG. Even those observers who defend the SG, including veterans of the office, caution that inconsistency in legal argument poses a threat to the SG’s credibility with the Court. Our goal is to better understand the circumstances that lead the SG to change its position on …

Perfecting Our Submission? Mann And Trump, Ruffin And Roberts, Joseph Scott Miller

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Presidential power is vast, both under law and in practice. Who holds presidents accountable, and by what means? Courts wrestle with these intertwined questions of power and accountability. The majority opinion in the 2024 presidential immunity case, Trump v. United States, is eerily resonant, rhetorically, with a notorious judgment enhancing one person’s power over others by shielding that power utterly from criminal-law accountability. That judgment, from 1829, is Judge Thomas Ruffin’s infamous slavery-law opinion for the North Carolina Supreme Court in State v. Mann. I juxtapose the two opinions, which share jarringly similar claims about the nature of power, rule, …

Posteriores Priores: An Unconstitutional Congressional Role In Treaty Termination, Donna D. Mckeage

Maine Law Review

The Supreme Court recently decided a case involving an apparent conflict between a treaty provision and a subsequent act of Congress. A Japanese subsidiary corporation, Sumitomo Shoji America, Inc., claimed a provision of the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation of 1953 between the United States and Japan exempted it from the prohibition against discrimination embodied in title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Court did not reach this issue because it found Sumitomo Shoji America, Inc. to be a United States corporation and unable, therefore, to invoke the provisions of the treaty. The issue raised in …

Bend, Don’T Break: Promoting Interagency Collaboration To Enhance Economic Sanctions As A Foreign Policy Tool, Carson Sugg

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

The U.S. government’s sanctions measures and related enforcement actions for violations are ascending to new levels— both in number and scope. The Executive branch contends that additional authority is necessary to adequately undertake these initiatives, which are a response to proliferating exigent global situations. The requests face opposition from members of Congress and legal scholars, who argue that the current sanctions regime disproportionally favors the Executive at a cost to both individuals and the co-equal branches. The push and pull of these stances suggest that a review of the current regime is due.

This Note argues that economic sanctions …

Venality: A Strangely Practical History Of Unremovable Offices And Limited Executive Power, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Notre Dame Law Review

The Roberts Court has asserted that Article II’s “executive power” implied an “indefeasible” or unconditional presidential removal power. In response to counterevidence from the Founding era, unitary executive theorists have claimed a “British Backdrop” of a general removal power under the English Crown and European “executive power.” These assumptions are incorrect.

This Article shows that many powerful executive officers through the late eighteenth century, especially high English Treasury offices and even “department heads” in the cabinet, were unremovable. A long common law tradition protected many English offices as freehold property rights. Moreover, this Article explains why it was widely understood …

Water, Rosario Sanchez, Gabriel E. Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

As the new US administration begins its term in January 2025, its ability to address complex, interconnected challenges will shape the future of US-Mexico relations. From economic cooperation and migration to shared security concerns, the new president’s leadership will be pivotal in navigating these critical issues and strengthening bilateral ties between Mexico and the United States. Effective collaboration will be vital to building a more prosperous and stable North America.

To support this effort, the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute has prepared a comprehensive booklet as a practical roadmap for the incoming administration. This publication offers actionable recommendations across six priority …

How The European Union Should Respond To Trump's Tariffs, Ignacio García Bercero, Petros C. Mavroidis, André Sapir

Faculty Scholarship

President-elect Trump has threatened to increase United States tariffs to 60 percent on imports from China and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other trading partners, including the European Union. In doing so the US would be ignoring its World Trade Organisation commitments and would also rollback the substantial liberalisation that has taken place during the past 80 years, with a potentially major negative impact on the world economy.

In response to this threat, the EU should pursue a three-pronged strategy.

First, the EU should engage bilaterally with the US to seek to avoid the imposition of tariffs. …

The Good Officer: President Trump, General Milley, And The “Necessity” Of Constitutional Fidelity, John C. Dehn

Brooklyn Law Review

Actions taken by General Mark Milley, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to prevent an abuse of presidential power during the waning days of the Trump administration prompted a range of reactions and concerns. This Article leverages these events to explore the circumstances under which a member of the armed forces or senior executive branch official may have a moral or legal right or duty to disobey presidential orders or authorizations that entail a clear violation of the Constitution or federal laws, or that abuse lawful authorities in ways that would subvert the Constitution’s text or vital …

Accommodating Incompetency In Immigration Court, Elizabeth Jordan

Northwestern University Law Review

In criminal law, an individual must be deemed competent to stand trial, yet our immigration courts routinely order the deportation of incompetent noncitizens. A removal proceeding against a noncitizen—where an outcome of deportation often risks life-threatening harm—continues apace even if the noncitizen has been deemed incompetent by the immigration judge. In place of halting proceedings, the immigration judge imposes “safeguards” pursuant to a provision of the immigration code that neither defines nor explains the term. In practice, judges’ application of the term “safeguards” is often absurd. The implications of continuing a proceeding against a noncitizen with a disability affecting competency …

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.