Peter M. Shane's 2009 book, Madison's Nightmare: Unchecked Executive Power and the Threat to American Democracy, is published by the University of Chicago Press. He is the Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law at the Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, where he also directs the Project on Law and Democratic Development. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, Professor Shane clerked for the Hon. Alvin B. Rubin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He served as an attorney-adviser in the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel and as an assistant general counsel in the Office of Management and Budget, before entering full-time teaching in 1981 at the University of Iowa. He has visited at Duke, Boston College, and Villanova Law Schools, and was the inaugural "Visiting Foreign Chair" for the University of Ghent Program in Foreign and Comparative Law in Ghent, Belgium, in 2001. Peter's research focuses on (1) law and the American presidency, (2) democratic theory, and (3) cyberdemocracy, the use of new information technologies to expand opportunities for citizens to participate meaningfully in the formulation of public policy. With Professor Stephen Coleman of the University of Leeds, he co-chairs the NSF-supported International Working Group on Online Consultation and Public Policy Making (IWG).

Blog Entries by Peter M. Shane

Putting Local Journalism at the Core of Higher Education

Posted November 23, 2009 | 10:04 AM (EST)


Last Friday, about 35 of us got together at Ohio State for an informal symposium about the local implications of Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age, which was the final report of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. As the Commission's...

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Needed: Social Investment in An Informed Society

5 Comments | Posted November 2, 2009 | 11:45 AM (EST)


You could keep yourself quite busy these days reading about and attending conferences on new models for journalism. But the current moment of journalistic ferment is actually part of a larger and more alarming story.

The United States is dramatically underinvesting in the production and circulation of knowledge.

...
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Obama's Peace Prize: The World Bets on America

6 Comments | Posted October 9, 2009 | 10:30 AM (EST)


It's a safe bet that President Obama's first words this morning were something akin to, "I won what??" This is, after all, the man who conceded that Arizona State had a point in thinking an honorary degree might be premature. President Obama - whom I admire deeply - has been...

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Knight Commission Recommends Universal Broadband, Urges National Dialogue to Improve "Information Health" of America's Local Communities

6 Comments | Posted October 2, 2009 | 02:54 AM (EST)


The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy is Friday morning debuting its final report, Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age.

The report marks the first time in the digital age that an independent, bipartisan, blue-ribbon panel has sought to explain what exactly are...

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President Obama, Health Care and the Rope Burning Contest

5 Comments | Posted August 25, 2009 | 07:46 AM (EST)


Premature post-mortems for health care reform blame President Obama for not weighing in early and forcefully with a specific plan of his own. This supposedly would have helped galvanize support and showed real leadership. The president allegedly "over-learned" the lessons of the Clinton insurance reform effort.

But what would have...

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Protecting U.S. Attorneys from At-Will Discharge

Posted July 31, 2009 | 08:30 PM (EST)


The week's revelations about Karl Rove's hand in the firing of U.S. attorneys make clear that the time has come to protect U.S. attorneys, by statute, from at-will discharge. Like other quasi-independent law enforcers -- members, for example, of the Federal Trade Commission -- they should be subject to discharge...

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President Obama's Signing Statements and Congress's Response: A Return to Separation of Powers Sanity?

Posted July 21, 2009 | 11:48 AM (EST)


An intriguing debate continues whether President Obama's use of signing statements to protest provisions of statutes he is signing into law is either consistent with his promise of restraint in issuing signing statements or vindication of George W. Bush's unprecedented volume of such presidential prose.

Having parsed the nine...

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Take the Whole Constitution Seriously: How to Restart a National Conversation on Federal Judges and Constitutional Meaning

1 Comments | Posted June 23, 2009 | 03:09 PM (EST)


America's legal progressives are wondering how to re-engage the American public more generally in a serious discussion about the role of federal judges in interpreting the Constitution. This was a question much discussed, both formally and informally, at last week's superb annual convention of the American Constitution Society...

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We Need Your Input on Community Information Needs

Posted April 28, 2009 | 04:15 PM (EST)


In a post last week, I explained the origins of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs in a Democracy and its initiative to address three critical questions:

1. What are the information needs of communities in a democracy?

2. How well are those information needs being...

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Help Identify the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy

Posted April 21, 2009 | 10:13 AM (EST)


A national study on the information needs of communities in a democracy needs your help.

In late 2007, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation awarded a grant to the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C. to organize the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities...

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The White House Role in Regulatory Policy Making: Time for a Change?

Posted March 5, 2009 | 04:10 PM (EST)


Arguably, the most important legal document of the last 30 years that hardly anyone in America knows about was Executive Order No. 12,291, the Reagan executive order that created the modern system of White House oversight of federal regulatory policy making. The Order required federal agencies other than the...

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The Audacity of Rush Limbaugh's Hope: Standing Up to the Hubris of a Bully

Posted January 29, 2009 | 10:34 AM (EST)


When GOP defenders said that the impeachment of Bill Clinton for lying about sex was not about sex, you pretty much knew it was about sex. When the same folks say that Rush Limbaugh's despicable line -- "We are being told that . . . we have to bend over,...

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Obama's First Executive Order Strikes a Blow for Transparency and the Rule of Law

Posted January 22, 2009 | 11:17 AM (EST)


In a world where political symbols matter, President Barack Obama chose a worthy subject for the first executive order of his new administration.

His first executive order, entitled "Presidential Records," revokes Executive Order 13,233, President George W. Bush's constitutionally lunatic procedure for enabling former Presidents and Vice Presidents...

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Executive Vigor Without Executive Arrogance III: Three Steps Away from the Unitary Presidency

Posted January 9, 2009 | 11:20 AM (EST)


My last two posts focused on whether a newly inaugurated President Obama can move energetically to displace Bush-era policy without embracing a radical theory of the unitary presidency. Having reviewed the permissible scope and usual process for executive orders in general, I here offer three specific suggestions for shifting...

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Executive Vigor Without Executive Arrogance II: A Primer on Executive Orders

Posted January 9, 2009 | 10:58 AM (EST)


In any entry last week, I posed the question, how can Barack Obama use whatever authority he has to undo the George W. Bush policy regime as quickly as possible without embracing Bush's obnoxious views of presidential power -- in particular, his theory of the "unitary Presidency?" My first...

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Executive Vigor Without Executive Arrogance I: Ending the Reign of Signing Statements

Posted December 29, 2008 | 10:58 AM (EST)


With the oath of office and an inaugural address behind him, a newly installed President Barack Obama is going to face an immediate and profound dilemma: how to use his authority to undo the George W. Bush policy regime as quickly as possible without embracing Bush's own obnoxious views of...

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My Election Eve Hopes: Closing the Book on Bush's Regulatory Legacy, Redefining "the Center"

Posted November 3, 2008 | 10:16 AM (EST)


If tomorrow's results follow the polls, the United States will have an extraordinary opportunity simultaneously to close the book on what is probably the third worst Administration in history - let's hear it for James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson! - and redefine the shape of American politics for generations.

Of...

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Voting for Democracy: The Obama Vision of Open Government and Public Engagement

Posted October 30, 2008 | 12:00 PM (EST)


Lost in our understandable preoccupation with a host of immediate crises might be the fact that the Obama platform holds out the promise of an unprecedented revitalization of American democracy. If you're inclined to take Senator Obama's advice and vote hopes rather than fears, you ought to go to his...

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Voting Against Monarchy: The Supreme Court, the Unitary Presidency, and the Danger to Democracy

Posted October 27, 2008 | 02:04 PM (EST)


With the economy collapsing, ice caps melting, health care costs surging, and American troops in harm's way, it may be hard to remember there is another huge issue in this election campaign - the future of the constitutional presidency itself.

Depending on the specific legal issue presented, the Supreme Court...

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Is Palin Rehearsing to Be Dick Cheney II?

Posted October 23, 2008 | 09:45 AM (EST)


During her televised debate with Joe Biden, Sarah Palin actually said: "[W]e know what a vice president does. And that's not only to preside over the Senate and we'll take that position very seriously also. I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president...

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