Law According To A King

The debate as to how far the office of the Prime Minister has evolved to become more like that of a President is a hot one in political and constitutional theory, but it does have some practical ramifications for the way we think about our leaders. This post shall take a look at the arguments for and against the 'presidentialisation' of the prime minister, and examine the consequences for either side.  Firstly, it is widely accepted that the executive office of the PM has grown in recent decades. In 1970, the cabinet office had just 600 staff, but under Tony Blair, that number grew to over 2,500. As a comparison, the executive office of the President has around 4,000 - though most scholars agree this growth can be attributed to the expansion of the administrative state since the end of WWII. Better, Dowding argues, to look at the role of the executive office. Dowding says the role of staffers in the PM's office is largely based around coordination across government, and the...

 Impeachment is the process by which the House of Representatives votes by a majority to level charges against a federal official, in this case, the President. These charges are then brought to the Senate, where the 100 senators hold a trial, presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and vote on whether to convict. A 2/3 majority of 67 votes is required to convict, and a conviction will remove the official from office. There are a number of Constitutional sources detailing the impeachment process: Article 1, section 2, clause 5  "The House of Representatives shall ... have the sole Power of Impeachment" Article 1, section 3, clauses 6 and 7  "The Senate shall have the sole power to try all Impeachments... [N]o person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office."  Article 2, section 2  The President [shall have Power to grant R...

"You've chosen to be the president's lawyer," declared Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono to Bill Barr in the Senate Judiciary Committee when the Attorney General testified on his handling of the Mueller Report. Since his appointment in 2019 after the firing of Jeff Sessions, Barr has led the US Department of Justice and acted as the nation's top law enforcement official for his second time, after a two-year tenure under George H W Bush. His expansive view of executive powers and his apparent partisan actions have drawn a great deal of criticism, particularly in his last congressional hearing two days ago on the current unrest across the US following the murder of George Floyd earlier in the year. Barr's direction to federal officers to use chemical weapons, including tear gas and pepper bombs, and violent tactics against protestors, most infamously to move demonstrators away from Lafayette Park to allow for the President's photo op, drew particular ire from Rep....

The commerce clause of the United States Constitution is one of its most powerful and least understood. As the third clause of Art.1 s.8 of the Constitution, it provides Congress with the power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes," and for the purposes of this discussion, we will be looking mainly at interstate commerce, as this is the part that impacts most on the domestic agendas of (primarily Democratic) presidents throughout the centuries. Before we dive into the case law on this clause, it is essential first to understand the three distinct eras of jurisprudence, where we see the commerce clause interpreted restrictively, then expand rapidly after the New Deal, before regressing to its position a century earlier as the 1990s draw to a close. Before the New Deal During this era, several tests were developed to determine when the Court would intervene in the commerce clause.  The 'substantial ec...