‘Presidents Enjoy Remarkable Freedom’: Three Legal Experts on Trump 2.0

1 month ago 27

Opinion|‘Presidents Enjoy Remarkable Freedom’: Three Legal Experts on Trump 2.0

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/opinion/trump-supreme-court-second-term.html

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

round table

Dec. 20, 2024, 5:01 a.m. ET

By Kate Shaw David French and Jack Goldsmith

Ms. Shaw, a Times contributing Opinion writer, teaches law at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. French is a Times columnist. Mr. Goldsmith, a co-author, with Bob Bauer, of “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency,” teaches law at Harvard.

Kate Shaw, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Times Opinion columnist David French and Jack Goldsmith, a law professor at Harvard and a co-author of “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency,” to discuss some of the key legal questions likely to arise in the second 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 want to ask about the legal questions surrounding many of these efforts, as well as who will play prominent roles in the incoming administration. But first, I thought we could discuss executive power in a second Trump administration more broadly.

In light of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision from the end of the last term, will Trump possess, or claim to possess, more power than previous presidents? Jack, you’ve written about the immunity decision’s “relative insignificance.” Does that mean you think it doesn’t change 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 backdrop of the opinion will change the tenor of legal advice around the president, compared with the first Trump term?