I'm not going to wade too deeply into Jack and Sandy's somewhat metaphysical colloquy about whether a congressional override of the President's veto on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) would be a "constitutional moment," a vote of "no confidence" in the President, or a barrier to what would otherwise be "regime change. [read post]

Toward the end of this volume, David Golove offers an intriguing essay ("The Supreme Court, the War on Terror and the American Just War Tradition") which argues, among other things, that the Court's recent rulings on detainee rights in Guantanamo should be seen as, in some way, extensions of early American experience where "many of the most delicate and controversial questions under the laws of war were subject to judicial resolution in prize proceedings. [read post]

Balfour’s poodle.[2] David Lloyd George The most troubling countermajoritarian difficulty in modern constitutional law is Rule Twenty-Two of the United States Senate.[3] Forty-one Senators, who may represent less than forty-one percent of the population due to the malapportionment of the Senate, can veto most legislation and presidential nominations by refusing to invoke “cloture” and thereby allow debate on those matters to end.[4] Though the filibuster is woven into… [read post]

The Attorney General attracted a great deal of attention last week by delivering an address to the American Enterprise Institute in which he urged Congress to do something about the habeas corpus proceedings that are now underway as a result of the Boumediene decision. [read post]