President/Executive Department Commons^™

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 …

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 …

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

Publications

No abstract provided.

Co-Belligerency, Rebecca Ingber

Faculty Scholarship

Executive branch officials rest the President’s authority in today’s war against ISIS, al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups on an expansive interpretation of a 15-year-old statute, the 2001 “Authorization for Use of Military Force” (AUMF), passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. They rely on that statute to justify force against groups neither referenced in – nor even in existence at the time of – the 2001 statute, by invoking a creative theory of international law they call “co-belligerency.” Under this theory, the President can read his AUMF authority flexibly, to justify force against not only those groups covered …

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 …

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

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

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 …

Presidents Lack The Authority To Abolish Or Diminish National Monuments, Mark Squillace, Eric Biber, Nicholas S. Bryner, Sean B. Hecht

Publications

By any measure, the Antiquities Act of 1906 has a remarkable legacy. Under the Act, 16 presidents have proclaimed 157 national monuments, protecting a diverse range of historic, archaeological, cultural, and geologic resources. Many of these monuments, including such iconic places as the Grand Canyon, Zion, Olympic, and Acadia, have been expanded and redesignated by Congress as national parks. While the designation of national monuments is often celebrated, it has on occasion sparked local opposition, and led to calls for a President to abolish or shrink a national monument that was proclaimed by a predecessor. This article examines the Antiquities …

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 …

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 …

A History Of Prosecutorial Independence In America, Rebecca Roiphe

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Blocking The Courts: The Trump Triple Threat, Joanne Doroshow

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Congress To Judges: We’Re The Boss Of You Now, Joanne Doroshow

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Pentagon’S Discretion In Trump Trans Military Directive, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

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.

Military Cyber Professionals Have An Important Part To Play In The Obama-Trump Transition, Michael V. Hayden

Military Cyber Affairs

Over the course of decades in service, I have experienced multiple presidential transitions. Each new Commander in Chief updates policies, personnel, and priorities…especially when the transition involves a new political party. In this respect, the current transition from the Obama to the Trump administration is no different. While this periodic exercise of our democracy may seem disruptive to some, it is a true opportunity for military cyber professionals to help shape our future national security posture.