I am proud to announce the University of Miami Constitutional Crisis Seminar Series. The series includes thirteen lectures, almost all of which will be available on line, with new ones appearing weekly. Select University of Miami Law School students will also have a private seminar-style discussion with the speakers, but these will not be published. I have organized this program because I think the issues are urgent and important.
The United States currently faces widespread and intense challenges to our constitutional system, particularly what remained of our checks and balances: While courts and scholars have wrestled with the expansion of executive powers and worried about Congressional delegation of its legislative powers, the current administration – with the assistance of both Congress and the Supreme Court — has taken these challenges to new levels.
Today we see unprecedented assertions of executive power, including powers to ignore statutes, impound funds, cancel signed contracts, shutter executive departments, fire independent officials, and make highly creative invocations of emergency authority. Behind many of these are Constitutional claims for the power of the “unitary executive” and (although much remains to be seen) an alleged executive authority to ignore federal judicial orders. Complicating matters is Congressional silence, if not paralysis, in the face of executive power grabs, and an historic dependence on often unwritten constitutional and statutory norms that have been cast aside.
As lawyers and potential lawyers, we face particular responsibilities to understand the nature of what is fairly termed a constitutional crisis, and to think about whether and how to respond to it.
This seminar series will look at the legal system’s ongoing reaction to this massive reordering of federal power and individual constitutional rights, with a focus on the legal system’s reaction to current controversies. In addition to placing current events in historical context, we will look at the theoretical and structural constitutional causes of the crisis and what we might to do prevent a repetition or undo its most malign effects. We will examine how the legal system, primarily the courts but also other institutions such as the bar, have reacted to these new challenges, and what law and legal theory has to offer as to their causes and perhaps cures.
We are fortunate to have a stellar group of legal scholars, legal practitioners, and public intellectuals who have each agreed to speak on an aspect of the evolving situation.
With one exception, all of the lectures in the Constitutional Crisis Seminar series will be published online, on a weekly basis.
1 |
Intro: What is a Constitutional Crisis? Speaker: Kim Lane Scheppele |
2 |
The Unitary Executive & Its Critics Speaker: Peter Shane |
3 |
Constitutional Hardball Speaker: Mark Tushnet |
4 |
Tariffs Speaker: Ilya Somin |
5 |
Assertions of Emergency Power Speaker: Harold Hongju Koh |
6 |
Immigration Control / Rendition Speaker: Cody Wofsy At the speaker’s request, this lecture will not be published online |
7 |
Removals of Officers & Inferior Officers, Bureaucratic Control (Schedules F & G), Vacancies Act Speaker: Thomas Berry |
8 |
Impoundments & Other Fiscal Control Strategies Speaker: Zachary Price |
9 |
Attacks on Civil Society (Law Firms, Universities, NGOs) Speaker: Genevieve Lakier |
10 |
Role of Courts / Attacks on Courts Speaker: Stephen Vladeck |
11 |
Reserved for late-breaking developments |
12 |
Formal Correctives Including Constitutional Reform Speaker: Sanford Levinson |
13 |
Life During a Constitutional Crisis Speaker: Bernard Harcourt |
I would like to hire a UM 1L or 2L to be my research assistant for 10-15 hours/week during the coming semester. If things work out we might continue into the summer, and/or next year.
The University of Miami just announced 
