The Federalist Society recently unveiled its new Executive Branch Review Blog, which focuses on legal and constitutional issues involving – you guessed it – the executive branch. One of the regular bloggers there will be my wife Alison Somin, who serves as a special assistant/counsel with the US Commission on Civil Rights. Yesterday, she put […]
Archive | Executive Branch
No More Transparency, But Less Outside Scrutiny
Paul Thacker writes that the Obama Administration has “failed miserably” to fulfill its promises of more open and transparent government. What’s changed, however, is that the press and self-appointed good-government watchdogs are less interested in covering such questions. Whether it’s responding to Congress, media questions, or FOIA requests, this administration is no better than its […]
Rick Hasen Read the DoJ Inspector General Report on the Civil Rights Division So You Don’t Have To
As his Election Law Blog Rick Hasen has a fairly thorough summary of the just-released Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the politicization of the Civil Rights division. The bottom line: liberal and conservative employees of the division did not play well with one another. The IG largely absolves attorneys within the division of engaging […]
Reactions to the Drone Strike “White Paper”
The release by NBC News of a confidential “white paper” outlining the basis upon which the Obama Administration justifies the use of drones to conduct targeted killings of suspected terrorists, including American citizens, has prompted a substantial amount of commentary — mostly negative. Among other things, critics note the expansive notion of what constitutes an […]
Now THAT Is A Signing Statement!
Today the President issued a signing statement regarding H.R. 4310, the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013.” I haven’t written much on President Obama’s constitutional signing statements recently (those suffering from insomnia, see here , here, here, here, here, and here for examples from 2009-2011), but today’s installment is such a classic of the genre that I thought […]
National Security Law in the News
By Eugene Kontorovich on November 25, 2012 11:51 am in Constitutional Law, Counter-Terrorism Policy, Criminal Law, Executive Branch, International Law, Military, National Security, Press, Targeted Killing
National Security Law in the News: A Guide for Journalists, Scholars, and Policymakers is a new book published by the ABA’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security and Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. Despite the title, the book should be of interest to a general audience, as it offers a concise, broad plain-language overview […]
Update on Lawsuit Challenging CFIUS Action Blocking Chinese Wind-Farm Development
With my firm’s CFIUS experts, I put together a fuller analysis of the potentially significant CFIUS lawsuit I blogged earlier this month. For those just tuning in now: the U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States issued an order that blocked a Chinese-owned developer from proceeding with four wind-farm projects in Oregon; […]
Landmark Foreign-Investment Suit Filed
If you deal regularly with the federal government, there are more candidates for the “most important government office that you’ve never heard of” than you can count. My post tonight concerns not an office, but a federal interagency committee: the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known by its acronym CFIUS, which is undeniably powerful, […]
The Ruby Ridge murders, 20 years later
By David Kopel on August 22, 2012 11:48 pm in Criminal Law, Executive Branch, Growth of Government, Guns, Self-Defense, Targeted Killing, War on Drugs
The Prologue to my book No More Wacos: What’s Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix it, includes a section on the Ruby Ridge case. Much more on Waco and Ruby Ridge is available on the Waco page on my website.
Obama’s Reversals on Executive Power
By Ilya Somin on June 24, 2012 7:06 pm in Executive Branch, Obama, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has an interesting column describing some of President Obama’s evolving positions on executive power. He now engages in many of the same practices that he and numerous other liberal Democrats denounced as unconstitutional in the days of the Bush Administration: When George W. Bush was president of the United […]
President Obama’s Deferred Action on Immigration (and OLC)
Charles Krauthammer has a column today taking President Obama to task for his recent decision to “lift the shadow of deportation” from otherwise law-abiding undocumented aliens who came to the U.S. as children and allow them to “request temporary relief from deportations and apply for work authorization.” (For DHS’s page on the program, see here.) […]
In Praise of Obama’s New Immigration Policy
Last week, President Obama issued new guidelines allowing immigrants who illegally entered the United States as children to remain here so long as they are under the age of 30, have not been convicted of any crimes, and have either graduated from a US high school, are currently enrolled in school, or have served in […]
Flip-Flops on Executive Privilege
By Jonathan H. Adler on June 20, 2012 10:38 pm in Executive Branch, Kerr's Law, Separation of Powers
From Charlie Savage’s NYT report on President Obama’s assertion of Executive Privilege as the basis for the Justice Department’s refusal to turn over internal agency documents concerning the “Fast and Furious” scandal to a house oversight committee: The invocation of executive privilege by Mr. Obama added a new element to the drama. While there is little […]
White House Asserts Executive Privilege as Contempt of Congress Vote Looms
I have not been following the “Fast and Furious” scandal all that closely (or even much at all), but this seems like an interesting development for those who are interested in separation of powers questions. President Obama asserted executive privilege over documents related to the “Fast and Furious” operation Wednesday as a House panel moved […]
How President Obama Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Executive Power
In today’s NYT, Charlie Savage reports on how President Obama evolved from a fierce critic of unilateral exercise of executive power to a proponent. As a senator and presidential candidate, he had criticized George W. Bush for flouting the role of Congress. And during his first two years in the White House, when Democrats controlled […]