President/Executive Department Commons^™

Rapid Analysis Of Forensic-Related Samples Using Two Ambient Ionization Techniques Coupled To High-Resolution Mass Spectrometers, Eshwar Jagerdeo, Amanda Wriston

United States Department of Justice: Publications

RATIONALE: This paper highlights the versatility of interfacing two ambient ionization techniques, Laser Diode Thermal Desorption (LDTD) and Atmospheric Solids Analysis Probe (ASAP), to high-resolution mass spectrometers and demonstrate the method’s capability to rapidly generate high-quality data from multiple sample types with minimal, if any, sample preparation.

METHODS: For ASAP-MS analysis of solid and liquid samples, the material was transferred to a capillary surface before being introduced into the mass spectrometer. For LDTD-MS analysis, samples were solvent extracted, spotted in a 96-well plate, and the solvent was evaporated before being introduced into the mass spectrometer. All analyses were performed using …

#Betterrules: The Appropriate Use Of Social Media In Rulemaking, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

In December 2015, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) use of various social media tools in a rulemaking under the Clean Water Act violated prohibitions in federal appropriations laws against publicity, propaganda, and lobbying. Although academics previously explored whether the use of technology in rulemaking might violate the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), the Paperwork Reduction Act, or the Federal Advisory Committee Act, none predicted that one of the first firestorms surrounding the use of social media in rulemaking would arise out of federal appropriations laws. ...

As the Administrative Conference of the United States …

Does The Constitution Allow President To Ban Muslims?, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "The president-elect has stated that he intends to protect national security by banning Muslim immigration into the United States. He also has signaled an openness to some form of Muslim registration program. Does the Constitution impose barriers to the adoption of such policies?"

A Us Clean Energy Transition And The Trump Administration, Joseph P. Tomain

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The Obama administration undertook several steps giving the US federal government a leadership role in a clean energy transition. Among other actions, the administration develop a Climate Action Plan, successfully negotiated higher fuel vehicle standards with car manufacturers, passed the Clean Power Plan, and signed the Paris Climate Agreement. Although the United States had been party to other international climate agreements and was a signatory to the Rio Declaration, other federal efforts were lax at best.

During his election campaign, Donald Trump promised his supporters to eliminate the Clean Power Plan, withdraw from the Paris Agreement, curtail the Environmental Protection …

Signing Statements And Presidentializing Legislative History, John De Figueiredo, Edward H. Stiglitz

Faculty Scholarship

Presidents often attach statements to the bills they sign into law, purporting to celebrate, construe, or object to provisions in the statute. Though long a feature of U.S. lawmaking, the President has avowedly attempted to use these signing statements as tool of strategic influence over judicial decision making since the 1980s — as a way of creating “presidential legislative history” to supplement and, at times, supplant the traditional congressional legislative history conventionally used by the courts to interpret statutes. In this Article, we examine a novel dataset of judicial opinion citations to presidential signing statements to conduct the most comprehensive …

Fundamentally Unfair: Databases, Deportation, And The Crimmigrant Gang Member, Katherine Conway

American University Law Review

Provocative language painting immigrants as dangerous criminals and promises of increased immigration enforcement were cornerstones of Donald j Trump's presidential candidacy. As president, he has maintained this rhetoric and made good on many of his promises by broadening the definition of "criminal conduct" for immigration enforcement purposes, touting a renewed focus on immigrant gangs and cartels, and conducting several nation-wide anti-gang sweeps that placed an estimated 1095 "known" gang members in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. But the Trump Administration did not create the specter of the criminal immigrant, or "crimmigrant," gang member, nor did it create the detection …

The Carried Interest Standoff: Reaffirming Executive Agency Authority, Dean Galaro, Gregory S. Crespi

SMU Law Review

This Article argues that, if reform is necessary, carried interest taxation should be amended by agency rulemaking and not by Congress. Much has already been said about carried interest, but this Article attempts to look through a new lens—legislative history. Carried interest presents a complicated question about the application of foundational partnership tax principles. It is an issue that has received popular attention only within the last decade. Since then, the face of reform has been efforts in Congress to pass an overly complex bill—Section 710. By looking back through the legislative history of carried interest, we begin to see …

Combating The Ninth Circuit Judicial Vacancy Crisis, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

When Donald Trump became President, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had four judicial vacancies that the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO) identified as “judicial emergencies.” The court also faces a larger caseload than all the other regional circuits, and has frequently decided appeals the least swiftly. The 2016 election returns indicate that more confirmations will be necessary due to additional court members’ probable retirement or assumption of senior status during President Trump’s administration. Striking politicization could frustrate this effort, however. Soon after the inauguration, President Trump signed a novel executive order proscribing U.S. …

Confirming Judge Restrepo To The Third Circuit, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

From the moment that the Grand Old Party (GOP) won the Senate in November 2014, Republicans have directly and incessantly vowed to establish “regular order” in the upper chamber again. Lawmakers employed this phrase to depict the purported restoration of strictures that prevailed until Democrats subverted them. In January 2015, when the 114th Congress began, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Majority Leader, proclaimed, “[w]e need to return to regular order,” while the legislator has dutifully recited that mantra ever since. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, espoused analogous concepts. Illustrative was his January 2015 pledge …

Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Keynote Speaker: Don Graves, Deputy Assistant To President Obama And Counselor To Vice President Biden: January 24, 2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (January 2017): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Government Speech And The War On Terror, Helen Norton

Publications

The government is unique among speakers because of its coercive power, its substantial resources, its privileged access to national security and intelligence information, and its wide variety of expressive roles as commander-in-chief, policymaker, educator, employer, property owner, and more. Precisely because of this power, variety, and ubiquity, the government's speech can both provide great value and inflict great harm to the public. In wartime, more specifically, the government can affirmatively choose to use its voice to inform, inspire, heal, and unite -- or instead to deceive, divide, bully, and silence.

In this essay, I examine the U.S. government's role as …

Introducing Govinfo: A New Source For Federal Government Documents Online, Erik Beck

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Bipartisan Bayh Amendment: Republican Contributions To The Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Joel K. Goldstein

All Faculty Scholarship

It is appropriate that Senator Birch Bayh has been widely recognized as the author and person most responsible for the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. His work was indispensable, and he was helped by other Democrats and nonpartisan actors including the American Bar Association and John D. Feerick, among others. Yet the Amendment was also the product of bipartisan cooperation. Important provisions were based on work done during the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Eisenhower and his Attorney General, Herbert Brownell, played important roles in supporting Bayh’s proposal as did other Republicans in and out of Congress. Republicans like Representative Richard …

Executive Agreements Relying On Implied Statutory Authority: A Response To Bodansky And Spiro, David A. Wirth

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Until recently, the law surrounding executive agreements has been a subject of attention from a relatively small number of academics concerned with foreign relations law, along with State Department lawyers who have a need to deploy the underlying concepts in concrete determinations. Then, with little advance warning, the Paris Agreement thrust legal doctrines surrounding executive agreements to center stage in public policy debates and in the popular press. President Donald Trump's campaign promise to "cancel" the Paris Agreement has drawn even more attention to the issue. Unfortunately, the result has been a great deal of confusion, often needlessly contributing to …

"Head-Of-State-Owned Enterprise" Immunity, Pammela S. Quinn

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

While other wealthy individuals and businessmen have served and do serve as heads of state, the Trump presidency appears to be unique in terms of the global scope of the President's business interests, his propensity to be sued, and his disinterest in disentangling his business interests from his official agenda. This Article conceptualizes Trump's many business holdings and licenses under the Trump Organization International umbrella as a "head-of-state-owned enterprise." This raises issues similar to cases involving both head-of-state and state-owned enterprise immunity. Considering existing immunity doctrines, including gaps and contested areas in the law pertaining to them, the Article identifies …

Despite Trump, Federal ‘Tort Reform’ Makes A Hasty Retreat, Joanne Doroshow

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Sally Yates, Ronald Dworkin, And The Best View Of The Law, W. Bradley Wendel

Michigan Law Review Online

What interests me, as a scholar of legal ethics and jurisprudence, is whether Yates got it right when she said the responsibility of a lawyer for the government is to seek justice and stand for what is right, and that the position of the Department of Justice should be informed by the lawyer’s best view of the law. Yates’s claim that legal advice should be informed by the best view of the law sounds very much like the position of Ronald Dworkin. Dworkin argued that a judge should determine the legal rights and duties of the litigants by constructing the …

Cognitive Competence In Executive-Branch Decision Making, Anna Spain Bradley

Publications

The decisions Presidents and those operating under their authority take determine the course of our nation and the trajectory of our lives. Consequently, understanding who has the power and authority to decide has captured both the attention of legal scholars across a variety of fields for many years and the immediate worry of the public since the 2016 Presidential election. Prevailing interventions look for ways that law can offer procedural and institutional reforms that aim to maintain separation of powers and avoid an authoritarian regime. Yet, these views commonly overlook a fundamental factor and a more human one: the individuals …

Administrator-In-Chief: The President And Executive Action In Immigration Law, Ming H. Chen

Publications

This Article provides a framework for understanding the role of the President as the Administrator-in-Chief of the executive branch. Recent presidents, in the face of heated controversy and political division, have relied on executive action to advance their immigration policies. Which of these policies are legitimate, and which are vulnerable to challenge, will determine their legacy. This Article posits that the extent to which the President enhances the procedural legitimacy of agency actions strengthens the legacy of the policies when confronted regarding their substance. This emphasis on shoring up administrative procedure is a form of expertise that should be counted …