In this episode, Harold Hongju Koh of Yale Law School, Deborah Pearlstein of Princeton University, and Matthew Waxman of Columbia Law School join Jeffrey Rosen for a conversation to explore Trump v. United States, the history of presidential immunity, and the updated edition of Koh’s landmark book, The National Security Constitution in the Twenty-First Century. This program originally streamed live on July 1, 2024 as part of the NCC’s America’s Town Hall program series.
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Today’s episode was produced by Lana Ulrich, Tanaya Tauber, and Bill Pollock. It was engineered by David Stotz and Bill Pollock. Research was provided by Samson Mostashari, Cooper Smith, and Yara Daraiseh.
Participants:
Deborah Pearlstein is the Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor in Law and Public Affairs and director of the program in law and public policy at Princeton University. She has written extensively on national security and the separation of powers and has testified before Congress on numerous accounts on topics ranging from military commissions to presidential power. She also served as the founding director of the law and security program at Human Rights First and was appointed to a 2021 State Department Advisory Committee focused on declassifying government records surrounding major events in U.S. foreign policy.
Matthew Waxman is the Liviu Librescu Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where he directs the National Security Law program, and an adjunct senior fellow for law and foreign policy at the Council of Foreign Relations. He previously served as principal deputy director of policy planning at the State Department. His prior government appointments included deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, director for contingency planning and international justice at the National Security Council, and executive assistant to the national security adviser.
Harold Hongju Koh is the Sterling Professor of International Law and former dean at Yale Law School. He is a leading expert in public and private international law, national security law, and human rights, the author of nine books, and has received 18 honorary degrees. His landmark 1990 book, The National Security Constitution: Sharing Power After the Iran-Contra Affair, traced the evolution of the constitutional struggle and balance of institutional powers in American foreign affairs and national security policy across America’s history. In this updated edition, The National Security Constitution in the Twenty-First Century, Koh brings the story to the present, placing recent events into constitutional perspective.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center. Rosen is also a professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. His most recent book is The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.
Additional Resources:
- Harold Koh, “The National Security Constitution in the Twenty-First Century”
- Trump v. United States (2024)
- Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024)
- United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp. (1936)
- Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (Steel Seizure Case) (1952)
- The Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793-1794
- Deborah Pearlstein, “Lawyering the Presidency,” The Georgetown Law Journal (2022)
- Deborah Pearlstein, “The Executive Branch Anticanon,” Fordham Law Review (2020)
- Matthew C. Waxman, “War Powers Reform: A Skeptical View”
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