Much of my writing on the constitutional separation of powers and checks and balances in operation is directed at the central importance of informal norms to effective government. Chief Justice Hughes famously wrote that "[b]ehind the words of the constitutional provisions are postulates which limit and...

On Wednesday, January 4, 2012, President Obama appointed three new members for the National Labor Relations Board. He also named Richard Cordray to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. To do so, he invoked his recess appointments power under Article II, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the...

The D.C. Circuit opinion avoiding President Obama's recess appointments to the NLRB purports to rest on a historically grounded reading of Article II of the Constitution. The relevant text says, "The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the...

From early in the 20th century through the 1980s, Congress had a habit of building into some of its legislation a little device called the one-House "legislative veto." The idea was this: Congress would enact a statute allowing some federal agency to regulate something. But, with the one-House veto, either...

Not being a psychiatrist, I don't really understand why the president's fairly modest efforts at gun policy reform seem to have utterly deranged some of his political opponents. But talk of impeachment in connection with his gun-related "executive orders" is, to put it mildly, ridiculous.

To put matters...

Within moments of President Obama's apparent victory in both popular and electoral votes, Speaker Boehner was claiming that Republicans enjoy their own mandate from the 2012 elections -- Republicans kept control of the House. I'm searching in vain for a polite word for this argument.

With unemployment still...

The framing of Congress's constitutional law-making powers -- so profoundly at issue in NFIB v. Sibelius, the "Obamacare case" -- reflects two contending principles that will never be drawn into any final, definitive balance.

One principle, the basis of the conservatives' unhappiness with the Affordable Care Act, is that the...

No parlor game has more preoccupied constitutional law professors this year than predicting the outcome of NFIB v. Sibelius, the Supreme Court ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Of the many dozens of predictions I had heard, many foresaw a 5-4 vote, but I know of no...

The Justice Department's release of on Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion regarding President Obama's recess appointments power is a welcome display of public accountability. However one analyzes the bottom line, the opinion is a model of the genre. It is thorough in its analysis, candid about points...

For all the brouhaha surrounding President Obama's recess appointments this week of three new members for the National Labor Relations Board and of Richard Cordray to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, what is most surprising - and most welcome from a constitutional perspective - is the...

I cannot say that my earlier suggestions for a pro-democracy constitutional amendment have ignited a firestorm of grassroots activity. They have, however, elicited enough email responses to prompt my attempt at a yet better-drafter version.

Members of Congress have already proposed a constitutional amendment to deal,...

The Occupy Wall Street movement has brought a level of energy and inspiration to participatory Left politics unseen since the 2008 Obama campaign and with, perhaps, yet more enduring potential.

Among admirers who are unfazed by the pathetic attempts at trivialization voiced by Republican politicians and their media propagandists, the...

In January, 2010, I proposed on this site a constitutional amendment that would enable our legislative bodies to rein in corporate influence over federal and state elections. If the American people are to retake their democracy, however, that authority must be combined with a federally protected right to...

When I started blogging occasionally for Huffington Post, I resolved to confine my use of this platform to issues on which my professional background in constitutional and administrative law would give me (and any readers I might have) the advantage of some actual expertise.

On this particular occasion, however, with...

Thanks to the debt ceiling deal no one liked, official Washington seems poised now to wait for a cumbersome congressional process to drag the country again through an extended spectacle of pathetic political gamesmanship. Critical points on the time line between now and January 1 include the end of the...

Our recent debt ceiling imbroglio revealed how little leverage presidents have to induce responsible behavior in a pathological Congress. Regarding the current FAA stalemate, however, the president has unambiguous authority to take one important step: he can cut short Congress's vacation. Article II, section 3 authorizes...

My Fellow Americans:

Today, for the first time in American history, the Congress of the United States has effectively prohibited the government from paying its bills. In the last 50 years, the debt ceiling has been raised 74 times, ten of those times since 2001. Those...

An obvious question, should Congress not manage to fend off default within the next two weeks, is: What does the president do then? If the president cannot pay off America's creditors and keep all government programs running, what legal authority does he have to deal with the crisis?

A little...

Given the long senatorial career of Vice President Joe Biden, it is not surprising that the President should assign him liaison duties with Congress on budget negotiations. What is puzzling is that the Administration has not appeared to take advantage of Biden with regard to two subjects about which he...

According to the United States Election Project at George Mason University, 132,645,504 Americans turned out to vote in the 2008 election, representing 61.6 per cent of the eligible voting population. Voters casting presidential ballots handed Barack Obama a 53 to 45 per cent win over John...