President/Executive Department Commons^™

The Government's Lies And The Constitution, Helen Norton

Publications

Governments lie. They do so for many different reasons to a wide range of audiences on a variety of topics. Although courts and commentators have extensively explored whether and when the First Amendment permits the government to regulate lies told by private speakers, relatively little attention has yet been paid to the constitutional implications of the government's intentional falsehoods. This Article helps fill that gap by exploring when, if ever, the Constitution prohibits our government from lying to us.

The government’s lies can be devastating. This is the case, for example, of its lies told to resist legal and political …

"Greatest Good Of The Greatest Number In The Long Run": Tr, Pinchot, And The Origins Of Sustainability In America, Charles Wilkinson

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Abiding Exceptionalism Of Foreign Relations Doctrine, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In their article The Normalization of Foreign Relations Law, Professors Ganesh Sitaraman and Ingrid Wuerth argue that “[foreign affairs] exceptionalism . . . is now exceptional,” and that this is a good thing. I agree with much of the authors’ normative argument for “normalization” of foreign affairs doctrine (as they define the term). But the authors overstate the extent to which such normalization has already occurred. There have indeed been some recent Supreme Court decisions that seem to lack the exceptional deference to the Executive that had characterized judicial decisionmaking in the foreign affairs area in previous years. But foreign …

The Administrative Conference And The Political Thumb, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

In his valuable contribution to this special issue, Richard Pierce underscores the role the Administrative Conference of the United States (“ACUS”) has played over the years in encouraging on the ground fact-finding by its consultants, who have usually been academics consulted at the beginning of careers that ever after would be marked by this encounter with the realities of the administrative process. As the mentee of Walter Gellhorn, who directed the remarkable empirical studies of federal agency procedures that underlay the eventual Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) and who was a member of the ACUS Council from its initiation in 1964 …

Apple Pie Propaganda? The Smith–Mundt Act Before And After The Repeal Of The Domestic Dissemination Ban, Weston R. Sager

Northwestern University Law Review

For over sixty years, the Smith–Mundt Act prohibited the U.S. Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) from disseminating government-produced programming within the United States over fears that these agencies would “propagandize” the American people. However, in 2013, Congress abolished the domestic dissemination ban, which has led to a heated debate about the role of the federal government in free public discourse. Although the 2013 repeal of the domestic dissemination ban promotes greater government transparency and may help counter anti-American sentiment at home, it also gives the federal government great power to covertly influence public opinion. To …

The President And The Constitution, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

That comprehensive and undefined presidential powers hold both practical advantages and grave dangers for the country will impress anyone who has served as legal adviser to a President in time of transition and public anxiety.... The purpose of the Constitution was not only to grant power, but to keep it from getting out of hand.... With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations.

The New Era Of Presidential Immigration Law, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

At the dawn of the Obama Administration, Professors Adam Cox and Cristina Rodríguez wrote: “[T]he inauguration of a new President can bring with it remarkable changes in immigration policy.” At the time they wrote that, this proposition was in some ways more a matter of advocacy than a description of reality. As we approach the election of a new president in 2016, we finally live in the world that Professors Cox and Rodríguez advocated. The election of a new President will likely carry significant immediate consequences for immigration policy. My goal in this short space will be to focus on …

The Judgment Fund: America's Deepest Pocket & Its Susceptibility To Executive Branch Misuse, Paul F. Figley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Over the last thirty-five years, the United States government has paid out billions of dollars in settlements that have had no fiscal consequences for the agencies whose actions caused the claims. It has done so through the Judgment Fund, a relatively unknown permanent, indefinite appropriation originally created by Congress almost half a century ago to pay certain types of judgments entered against the United States.

Congress struggled for nearly two hundred years to find a way to exercise its Appropriations Clause authority over claims payments that did not drown its members in procedural detail. The article surveys that history. Through …

Reducing Secrecy: Balancing Legitimate Government Interests With Public Accountability, Nadine Strossen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Quitting In Protest: A Theory Of Presidential Policy Making And Agency Response, Charles M. Cameron, John M. De Figueiredo, David E. Lewis

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the effects of centralized presidential policy-making, implemented through unilateral executive action, on the willingness of bureaucrats to exert effort and stay in the government. Extending models in organizational economics, we show that policy initiative by the president is a substitute for initiative by civil servants. Yet, total effort is enhanced when both work. Presidential centralization of policy often impels policy-oriented bureaucrats ("zealots") to quit rather than implement presidential policies they dislike. Those most likely to quit are a range of moderate bureaucrats. More extreme bureaucrats may be willing to wait out an opposition president in the hope …

Agora: Reflections On Zivotofsky V. Kerry : Historical Gloss, The Recognition Power, And Judicial Review, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Agora: Reflections On Zivotofsky V. Kerry, Curtis A. Bradley, Carlos M. Vazquez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Presidential Administration And The Traditions Of Administrative Law, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

American administrative law has long been characterized by two distinct traditions: the positivist and the process traditions. The positivist tradition emphasizes that administrative bodies are created by law and must act in accordance with the requirements of the law. The process tradition emphasizes that agencies must act in accordance with norms of reasoned decisionmaking, which emphasize that all relevant interests must be given an opportunity to express their views and agencies must explain their decisions in a public and articulate fashion. In the twentieth century, American administrative law achieved a grand synthesis of these two traditions, with the result that …

The National Security Council And The Iran-Contra Affair, Ed Jenkins, Robert H. Brink

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Is Military Justice Sentencing On The March? Should It Be? And If So, Where Should It Head? Court-Martial Sentencing Process, Practice, And Issues, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article starts with a sketch of the military justice system to orient readers. Understanding that structure, the article then describes the sentencing process for special and general courts-martial. The article follows by identifying two core military sentencing questions: First, should commanders have authority to grant clemency? Second, should the military justice system adopt sentencing guidelines? With respect to each topic presented, the article does not attempt to answer the questions nor offer prescriptions. Rather, it seeks to identify the principal fault lines around which debate should, or will likely, fall. The article next presents ‘‘nutshell’’ introductions to additional sentencing …

President Obama’S Immigration Plan: Rewriting The Law, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The National Environmental Policy Act Of 1969 And Its Implications For Nafta: Public Citizen V. United States Trade Representative, 822 F. Supp. 21 (D.D.C.), Rev'd 5 F.3d 549 (D.C. Cir. 1993)., Kristin R. Loecke

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Constitution Making In The Countries Of Former Soviet Dominance: Current Development, Rett R. Ludwikowski

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

War Over Words: Reinterpreting "Hostilities" And The War Powers Resolution, Eileen Burgin

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Lobue V. Christopher: Age-Old Separation Of Powers Debate Rages On As Court Rules Extradition Statute Unconstitutional, Joseph G. Silver

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.