Some parts are both good policy and legally unproblematic. Others - particularly the mandate imposed on private employers - are legally dubious and would set a dangerous precedent if upheld by courts.
OSHA has rarely used this option, which avoids the usual rule-making process, and most challenges to such edicts have been successful.
Emergency OSHA rules are frequently struck down by courts.
Plus: The vaccine and abortion debates, a promising jobs report, and more...
Biden's sudden embrace of a federal vaccine requirement seems inconsistent with his acknowledgment that he cannot mandate every COVID-19 precaution he'd like people to follow.
Yale Law School Prof. Cristina Rodriguez and I discussed this timely subject with host Stephen Henderson.
The president seems determined to anoint the agency’s director as the nation’s COVID-19 dictator, no matter what the law says.
This outcome was widely expected by legal commentators.
The administration issued the order even while conceding that it lacked the authority to do so.
Plus: The FBI had at least a dozen informants helping put together the plot to kidnap Michigan's governor, price controls fail again, and more.
Don't let naysayers fool you. Richard Branson's space flight is a boon for society.
It could, if it actually had the vast public health powers that the Biden administration claims it does.
New York's new law seems to conflict with a federal statute that protects manufacturers and dealers from liability for gun crimes.
Repealing the law that allowed America to depose Saddam Hussein won't stop us from waging war elsewhere.
The COVID-19 pandemic showed the dangers of letting governors unilaterally, dramatically, and indefinitely magnify their own powers.
The resolution is part of a broader movement to rein in executive power during emergencies.
The state is scheduled to ease its lockdowns on June 15. But Newsom still wants the power to control the terms.
A panel from the 2021 Federalist Society Ohio Lawyers Chapters Conference
Voters in Pittsburgh banned no-knock police raids and solitary confinement too.
The online event features panels on a wide range of issues related to executive power, including one on federalism where I will be one of the participants.
Plus: Is the coronavirus vaccine the most libertarian vaccine yet?
For Biden, the pandemic has become a catchall justification for a slew of big-government programs that he and the Democratic Party already wanted to pursue.
Destroying the ability of freelancers to make a living is union protectionism, not economic opportunity.
This is a subsidy for the schools, not the students.
Biden tonight, like LBJ in 1964, Ford in 1975, Reagan in 1981, and Obama in 2009, is ready to make some terraforming asks to a pliant Congress.
Executive order leaves it to individual businesses, not the government.
This is the conclusion of the Yale Journal on Regulation symposium about the book.
Even during a pandemic, major changes to laws and policies should be funneled through state assemblies.
Plus: GOP gender policing in North Carolina, marijuana legalization mistakes, and more...
The president's unilateral restrictions are legally dubious and unlikely to "save lives."
Contributors include a variety of legal scholars, including, Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Dan Farber, and myself, among others.
The new order is similar to the old, but includes an extensive section defending the measure on public health grounds.
The agency will be extending its controversial eviction moratorium through the end of June.
Stanford University's Terry Moe and the Cato Institute's Gene Healy debate giving fast-track authority to U.S. presidents.
A Soho Forum debate on expanding or restricting presidential powers.
For possessing a gun while committing a crime—even when no one is killed—too many defendants are slammed with sentences decades or even centuries longer than justice demands.
I argue that the recent air strike was legal, but overall US military intervention in Syria still lacks required congressional authorization. Biden may be trying to change that; but history gives reason for skepticism.
This initiative might help restore congressional control over war authorization. But there is reason for skepticism that it will pan out.
The strike was probably legal (as were similar small-scale strikes by Trump). But there are serious constitutional problems with the overall US military presence in Syria.
Two district court decisions have upheld the moratorium against various challenges, while one has ruled against it. The legal battle may be just beginning.
Under a bill the two senators reintroduced on Friday, all presidential emergency declarations would expire after 72 hours unless Congress votes to allow them to continue.
This action brings to an end a period when the US was more closed off to legal immigration than at any other time in the nation's history.
A 2000 OLC memo suggests the answer is "yes."
Presidents aren't saints. They aren't monarchs. They aren't celebrities. And they aren't your friends.
This is probably not what Lyndon B. Johnson had in mind.
If the refusal of lawmakers to enact a president's policies is justification for unilateral executive action, then a slide toward elective monarchy is inevitable.
The controversy over Trump’s pardons and commutations highlights longstanding problems with clemency.
