The Buckley Institute Firing Line Debate:
“The Executive Branch Belongs to the President.”
The Buckley Institute is excited to announce a Firing Line debate with Yale Law School’s Bruce Ackerman and University of St. Thomas School of Law’s Michael Paulsen.
In recent years, President Trump’s attacks on the “deep state” have brought the question of presidential authority to the front of national attention, inspiring passions on both sides about the prospect of government officials contravening the will of the president to whom they ultimately report. The two legal experts will sound off on the long-running debate and weigh in on the extent of presidential authority. They will look at whether and how government agencies and officials can operate outside of the authority of the elected leader of the executive branch.
Do all executive functions of the government need to be answerable, through chain of command, to the president? Do legislative or judicial checks authorize those branches to take over executive branch functions? What do the Constitution and historical precedent tell us about the role of political authority in directing the actions of government officials?
Bruce Ackerman is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale, and the author of nineteen books in political philosophy, constitutional law, and public policy. He is a Commander of the French Order of Merit, a member of the American Law Institute and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The American Philosophical Society has awarded him the Henry Phillips Prize for lifetime achievement in Jurisprudence, especially noting his exploration of the great turning points in American constitutional history in his three volume series, We the People. His award-winning early work, Social Justice in the Liberal State, continues to provoke contemporary controversy.
His scholarship has had a global impact. He has been named a Leading Global Thinker by Foreign Policy magazine, and has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Trieste, Italy, for his contributions to comparative constitutional law. Before the Next Attack (2006) served as a basis for the reform of the French constitution dealing with emergency powers. The Stakeholder Society (with Anne Alstott) has served as the basis for reform initiatives in Brazil, Britain, and elsewhere that guarantee every person a fair share of the nation’s wealth by providing them with a “citizen stake” consisting of a substantial cash grant as they reach maturity.
His recent book, Revolutionary Constitutions (Harvard: 2019) puts the worldwide constitutional crisis in historical perspective by comparing the postwar experience of countries as different as France, India, Iran, Italy, Israel, Poland, South Africa, and the United States — and suggests that these nations have a good deal to learn from one another in confronting the current assault on checks-and-balances. His arguments have generated a world-ranging discussion, provoking the publication of four Symposium volumes in which leading academics and jurists from around the world have greatly enriched comparative constitutional understanding.
More recently, he has published The Postmodern Predicament (Yale: 2024), dealing with the fundamental ways the internet revolution is transforming the struggle for a meaningful life — from the very first moment that a youngster picks up his first cellphone. Ackerman argues that 20th-century existentialists, like Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, offer crucial insights into the shattering challenges of the internet age — and follows their lead in proposing a series of decisive reforms that promise to reduce — if not eliminate — the clear and present danger to constitutional democracy in the postmodern world.
Michael Paulsen received his B.A. degree with distinction from Northwestern University, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He received an M.A. degree in Religion from Yale Divinity School and a J.D. degree from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and a recipient of the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for appellate advocacy. After graduation from law school, he joined the Department of Justice in the Criminal Division Honors Program, and has also served as staff counsel for the Center for Law & Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. and as an attorney-advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel.
Prior to coming to the University of St. Thomas School of Law, Paulsen served as the McKnight Presidential Professor of Law and Public Policy, Briggs and Morgan Professor of Law, and Associate Dean for Research and Scholarship at the University of Minnesota Law School.
Professor Paulsen is among the nation’s leading scholars of constitutional interpretation, and his publications include articles in the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Chicago Law Review, NYU Law Review, Texas Law Review, California Law Review, and the Georgetown Law Journal, among many others.