Congressional oversight is a means of “caging the executive lion” which Prakash believes to be constitutional and appropriate. See The Living Presidency at 261-64. But he overlooks the ways in which t...

Earlier this month the billionaire Leon Black sued the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (COGR) in federal district court, seeking injunctive and declaratory relief regarding two subp...

At least since Watergate the confirmation of an attorney general has been considered a matter of particular importance and sensitivity. This reflects both the necessity of ensuring that the administra...

In the last post we discussed how the unitary executory changes the psychology of executive office from being one of an agent of the law to being an agent of the president. Some might object, however,...

In my last post we considered whether the insecurity of unitary executive theory from the standpoint of constitutional text and other accepted methods of constitutional interpretation may explain the ...

We left off the last post by asking why Professor Prakash refuses to acknowledge the connection between the “creeping constitutional coup” of executive power, which he warns against in The Living Pres...

Professor Sai Prakash is a noted legal scholar and prolific author who has long been one of the leading advocates of the unitary executive. See, e.g., Aditya Bamzai & Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash, The...

Today the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) voted, 8-5 along party lines, to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions before th...

I will have a lot to say about the unitary executive in the coming weeks. I am less interested in relitigating whether the Supreme Court's view of the unitary executive, as most recently explained in ...

The corruption of the pardon power has been decades in the making. It’s time to fix it.

A few months ago a group of six Democratic members of Congress, including Senator Mark Kelly, released a video reminding members of the military that they have a duty to “refuse illegal orders.” The s...

During the December 8, 2025 oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter (involving the constitutionality of for cause limitations on the removal of FTC commissioners), Justice Barrett asked Slaughter’s counse...

The Washington Post had an article this weekend that discusses the paucity of oversight hearings in the current Congress, noting that “administration officials testified more often before many committ...

The Washington Post had an article this weekend that discusses the paucity of oversight hearings in the current Congress, noting that “administration officials testified more often before many committ...

As you may have heard, James Comey, the former FBI director, deputy attorney general, and 1985 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, has been indicted for lying to Congress. This is a rare...

Following up on my last post, I think an institutional position for Congress in the Slaughter case would look something like this. First, the Court can avoid addressing the precedential status of Hump...

As you may have heard, the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Trump v. Slaughter, a case in which a Federal Trade Commissioner whom President Trump purported to fire has sought reinstatement to h...

Tomorrow the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, affectionately known as HELP, will hold a hearing entitled "Restoring Trust Through Radical Transparency: Reviewing Recent Events at ...

“It is the proud boast of our democracy that we have a ‘government of laws and not of men,’” So opens Justice Scalia’s famous dissent in Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 697 (1987), which I happened t...

Today the House Oversight Committee issued this subpoena to Attorney General Pam Bondi seeking all documents in the possession of the Justice Department relating to Jeffrey Epstein, including document...

Note: since my last post the world has lost another lion of congressional oversight, Mort Rosenberg, who for 35 years was every House and Senate committee’s “go to” expert at the Congressional Researc...

Senior Fellow, AEI. Host of the Understanding Congress podcast. Editor of UnderstandingCongress.org.

Although Trump is more circumspect than Fitzgerald in acknowledging the policymaking nature of its decision, it is nonetheless based on a series of policy intuitions or judgments, some of which are bo...

Today we will consider the implications of Trump v. United States for the overall legal accountability of the executive. At the outset we should acknowledge that the future effect of this decision, as...

We are building a community of traditionally conservative and center-right lawyers, judges, scholars, and law students dedicated to defending truth, the Constitution, and the rule of law. And we want ...

If Trump v. United States has no foundation in the original meaning of the Constitution (as discussed in my last post), what is the rationale of the decision? Delahunty and Yoo make three main points ...

Today I will start a series of posts on the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential criminal immunity, Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. __, 144 S.Ct. 2312 (2024), and its implications for the legal a...

In today’s edition … Potential IRS tax revenue shortfall could move budget deadline up … Former Arizona state representative enters competitive Democratic primary to succeed Rep. Grijalva.

As reported by SCOTUSblog (among many others), Chief Justice Roberts today issued the statement that “[f]or more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate resp...

Do you remember how last summer I suggested the House’s odds of prevailing (in particular, with respect to standing) in a potential Obamacare lawsuit were in the vicinity of the proverbial snowball’s ...

When the Supreme Court decided Trump v. United States  last July, critics warned of dire consequences for the U.S. constitutional order. Are...

Elise Bean was a singular figure in the world of congressional oversight. She spent her career on the Hill working for Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich), most notably as his chief counsel and staff director...

When we last left the saga of the JOR memo, Roberts had reached the (imho erroneous) conclusion that while executive officers “are subject to subpoena to testify before the United States House of Repr...

So I have been planning to write posts on so many topics that I have gotten around to none of them. But a social media discussion today impels me to mention a House procedure which seems well suited, ...