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round table
By Kate ShawDavid French and Jack Goldsmith
Ms. Shaw, opinion for The Times, teaches law at the University of Pennsylvania. French is a Times columnist. Goldsmith, co-author with Bob Bauer of “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency,” teaches law at Harvard.
Opinion editor Kate Shaw hosted a written online exchange with Times opinion columnist David French and Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and co-author of “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency,” to discuss some of the key legal issues. Questions are very likely to arise in the current Trump administration.
Kate Shaw: We’re about a month from Inauguration Day and the start of the second Trump term. The country is likely to witness an avalanche of initiatives in the first days of the new administration, on topics ranging from immigration to the civil service to environmental regulation and more.
I need to ask questions about the legal issues surrounding many of those efforts, as well as who will play a leadership role in the new administration. But first, I think we could talk more broadly about executive strength at a point in the Trump administration.
In light of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling at the end of last term, will Trump possess, or claim to possess, more muscle than previous presidents? Jack, you wrote about the “relative insignificance” of the immunity ruling. Does that mean What do you think doesn’t replace much?
Jack Goldsmith: The immunity part of the opinion likely won’t change executive branch practice too much, but at the same time I said that I thought the big deal in the opinion is the way it describes presidential power generally. The court adopted a broad conception of the unitary executive that the Trump presidency will put to use far beyond the question of presidential immunity.
Shaw: Do you think the context of public opinion will supersede the tenor of legal advice around the president, Trump’s first term?
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