C-Span has now made available the video of last weekend’s panel discussion on executive power at the American Constitutional Society for Law and Policy annual convention, which I moderated. The all-star panel included Walter Dellinger, Marty Lederman, Sai Prakash, Neomi Rao, and Hina Shamsi.
Here is the description from ACS:
The Imperial Presidency?
President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama entered office with radically different conceptions of executive power, particularly with regard to war powers and national security, and the coming year will see the election of a new president. The Bush Administration claimed sweeping unilateral executive power to act contrary to federal laws that regulated surveillance and banned torture, and issued hundreds of signing statements asserting the right to disregard statutory requirements. President Obama entered office rejecting this overreaching and pledging to restore the rule of law. But in the face of congressional obstruction, President Obama also has been accused of abusing presidential power in the contexts of immigration, health care, climate change, and recess appointments. When the next president takes office in January 2017, what view of executive power will and should prevail, and what is at stake for the nation?