As part of their ongoing conversations about how to restore the guardrails of American democracy, the National Constitution Center and the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University present a conversation exploring the role of the president in our constitutional system. Experts Jessica Bulman-Pozen, law professor at Columbia Law School, Saikrishna Prakash, law professor and author of The Living Presidency: An Originalist Argument Against Its Ever-Expanding Powers, and Stephen Skowronek, political scientist at Yale University, discuss the original conception of presidential power and its expansion over time; and provide their take on what reforms, if any, may be necessary. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
This program is presented as part of the Renewing the Republic series, presented in partnership with the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and as part of the National Constitution Center's Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy initiative. It was made possible with support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) and Mike and Jackie Bezos.
Video
Podcast
Or, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
This episode was produced by Melody Rowell, Tanaya Tauber, John Guerra, and Lana Ulrich. It was engineered by the National Constitution Center's AV team. Questions or comments about the show? Email us at [email protected].
Participants
Jessica Bulman-Pozen is the Betts Professor of Law and a director of the Center for Constitutional Governance at Columbia Law School. She has written extensively about federalism for scholarly outlets including the Columbia Law Review and the Texas Law Review. Before joining the Columbia faculty, Bulman-Pozen served as an attorney-adviser in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel and as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Saikrishna Prakash is the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and the Albert Clark Tate, Jr., Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He is also a fellow at UVA's Miller Center. His most recent book is The Living Presidency: An Originalist Argument Against Its Ever-Expanding Powers, and he is also the author of Imperial from the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive. Prakash has testified before Congress several on times on questions of presidential power.
Stephen Skowronek is the Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political and Social Science at Yale University. He is the author of several books on the presidency and American politics, the most recent of which is Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive. Skowronek is also the co-founder of the journal Studies in American Political Development, which he edited between 1986 and 2007, and he provided the episode structure and thematic content for the PBS miniseries The American President.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Columbia Law Review, "Federalism as a Safeguard of the Separation of Powers"
- Saikrishna Prakash, The Living Presidency: An Originalist Argument against Its Ever-Expanding Powers
- Stephen Skowronek, John A. Dearborn, and Desmond King, Phantoms of a Beleagured Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive
- Saikrishna Prakash, The Washington Post, "Trump is right: Former presidents can assert executive priviledge"
- United States v. Nixon (1974)
- 116th Congress, H.R.8363 - Protecting Our Democracy Act (2020)
- Stephen Skowronek, Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal, 3rd Edition
- Theodore Lowi, The Personal Presidency: Power Invested, Promise Unfulfilled
- James Ceaser, Presidential Selection: Theory and Development
- Steven Calabresi and Christopher Yoo, The Unitary Executive: Presidential Leadership from Washington to Bush
- The American Presidency Project, "Executive Orders"
- Jeffrey Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency
Transcript
This transcript may not be in its final form, accuracy may vary, and it may be updated or revised in the future.
