Executive Power
83 Articles

Are We Down to One Branch of Government?
The Republican-led Congress has essentially abdicated its role. The Supreme Court — with its travel ban decision and especially now with Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement…

Conference on Executive Branch Power, Washington DC, Tuesday Dec 5
On Tuesday, December 5, a collection of scholars and both current and former senior government officials are convening for a day in Washington to discuss Modern Executive Power…

NYU Law Forum: “National Security: The Role of Senior Advisers in the White House”
On October 18, the Latham & Watkins Forum at NYU Law presented discussion on “National Security: The Role of Senior Advisers in the White House.” Just Security…

Fight It with FOIA: How Congress Can Respond to White House Attempts to Block Congressional Oversight
The Trump White House took another step last week to weaken the checks and balances at the center of our constitutional system. According to Politico, President Donald Trump’s…

Administrative Checks and Balances in the Trump Administration
Raise your hand if you went to bed Tuesday thanking James Madison for the gift of separation of powers. For years, scholars and pundits have resented that gift, railing against…

Congress’s Embarrassingly Empty (National Security) Record
This week, we learned the United States will send 250 special operations troops to the war in Syria, bringing the publicly known total number of American troops operating in the…

Surveillance Is Still About Power
Since the Snowden revelations in 2013, surveillance has gone from a somewhat arcane term of art used mainly by scholars, spies, and tinfoil hat types, to a household word that…

Power Wars Symposium: The Savage Effect
Editor’s Note: This is the first entry in a symposium Just Security is hosting in conjunction with this week’s release of Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency by…

Why the immigration initiative has nothing to do with assertions of executive constitutional power
My quick take here, dispelling some of the more common misunderstandings about the legal bases of the Executive’s new immigration policies.

The Bells of September
This September 11th, I traveled with my little boy down the tree-lined beauty of Savannah to Reynolds Square where, amidst the draped Spanish Moss, historic Christ Church rang…

The D.C. Circuit, Article II, and the Constitutionality of the Guantánamo Transfer Restrictions
When President Obama transferred five Taliban detainees from Guantánamo in exchange for American POW Bowe Bergdahl, forests were felled over whether the Obama Administration…