Suchergebnisse

My name is Kate Shaw, and I am a Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School, where my work focuses, among other things, on executive power and questions of constitutionalism outside the courts. Before I entered law teaching, I worked as an Associate Counsel in the White House Counsel's Office, from 2009–2011. I understand that the purpose of today's hearing is to evaluate recent breakdowns in the process for resolving conflicts between executive privilege and congressional oversight. My testimony will therefore offer some brief background on executive privilege, both generally and in the context of Congress's exercise of its oversight authority. It will then address recent developments—in Congress, the executive branch, and the courts—surrounding the interaction between executive privilege and congressional oversight. As my testimony will explain, long-standing norms of interbranch cooperation and accommodation have come under serious strain in recent years, and the process is clearly in need of reform. I'll therefore conclude with some thoughts about possible paths forward. This statement draws on legal authority from both courts and the political branches. But judicial authority in this area is limited: historically, most disputes between Congress and the executive branch over access to information have been resolved within the political branches, not in the courts. So, while I will address the handful of court cases that grapple with the contours of executive privilege, equally or more important here are the principles and practices that for decades have guided the political branches in their approach to executive privilege, and that in recent years have largely collapsed.

The Constitution says that what's happening in the Senate right now is a trial. But it's no ordinary trial: As we're all now well aware, a Senate trial is a hybrid affair, part law and part politics.

Disclosure is often an afterthought in debates about money in politics. Reformers have tended to take disclosure for granted, devoting little time to developing and refi ning the affi rmative case for it. They have also tended to assume that the current disclosure regime is an effective one, at least as far as it goes. Reformers have devoted substantial attention to the holes in the current regime in the post- Citizens United era— so- called "dark" and "gray" money 1 — and have considered ways to bring such activity into the light. Yet even if they are successful, such expansion efforts would only bring more dollars under the auspices of a disclosure regime in need of both stronger conceptual architecture and substantial practical improvements. So closing the gaps in the system is only one aspect of the task. ; https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/faculty-chapters/1088/thumbnail.jpg