Episode 140: Decider

If the president does it, is it automatically legal? Of course not, but why not? How is the president constrained by law? Daphna Renan joins us to talk about the structures within the Executive Branch and the attitudes toward them that define what the legal constraints presidents create for themselves. From the post-Watergate efforts to create independent and legalistic sources of Marbury-like trumps on presidential prerogative to today’s chaos, Daphna explores the many design choices between formality and informality, centralization and diffusion, and independence and control. Also the normal nonsense.

This show’s links:

Daphna Renan’s faculty profile and writing

Daphna Renan, The Law Presidents Make

About the Office of Legal Counsel, the White House Counsel, and the Solicitor General

Jeremy Waldron, Separation of Powers in Thought and Practice?

Jack Goldsmith, The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration

Special Guest: Daphna Renan.