Corey Brettschneider
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Articles by Corey Brettschneider
Can Democracy Survive After Trump? | It's the Democracy, Stupid with Brown University Professor Corey Brettschneider
At its founding, America’s Constitution was supposed to guide future generations in avoiding corruption and making sure the people hold the power. To the Founders, the system of checks and balances seemed unbreakable. Two hundred and fifty years later, Trump found a way to tear that all up and push the limits of the power that are vested to the President of the United States for his own personal gain. Can we rebuild in the wake of the mess of a madman?
Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It
Front page Balkin.com Balkinization an unanticipated consequence of Jack M.
Trump Has Sidelined Congress. Now, American Lives Are At Stake
Courtesy of the White House This weekend, Donald Trump unconstitutionally began a war with Iran. In the dead of night, without approval from either chamber of Congress, the president launched a full-scale attack on the Iranian regime in a campaign that is indistinguishable from full-blown war. A limited series of attacks this is not. This is war, and an unconstitutional one, at that. As we discussed on this week’s episode of The Oath and the Office, the implications are staggering.
When presidents become monarchs
Now It’s History explores the roots of today’s political and social turmoil by examining the past. Hosted by journalist Richard Galant, each episode uncovers the hidden patterns behind revolutions, protests, and power struggles, showing how events like President Richard Nixon’s resignation, the rise of social media and the election of Barack Obama continue to shape our world. Grounded in historical facts and expert interviews, this podcast reveals how history’s echoes influence our time.
Trump has forgotten his oath of office. History will not remember him kindly
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Trump has forgotten his oath of office. History will not remember him kindly
‘A president can meet the moment by defending the constitution and uniting the nation.’ Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters Over the course of American history, presidents have not been judged by whether violence occurred on their watch but by how they responded to it. Each crisis poses the same test: will the person who holds the office use it to steady the republic, or to further polarize it? The oath of office exists for precisely this moment.
Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It (W.W. Norton, 2024)
Wednesday, May 14, 2025 American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award for The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It (W.W. Norton, 2024) Corey Brettschneider Posted 2:26 PM by Corey Brettschneider [link] Books by Balkinization Bloggers Linda C. McClain and Aziza Ahmed, The Routledge Companion to Gender and COVID-19 (Routledge, 2024) David Pozen, The Constitution of the War on Drugs (Oxford University Press, 2024) Jack M.
Balkinization
Front page Balkin.com Balkinization an unanticipated consequence of Jack M.
The Just Security Podcast: ‘The Presidents and the People’ Book Talk
Editor’s note: This episode of the Just Security Podcast is part of a series from leading experts with practical solutions to democratic backsliding, polarization, and political violence. With the U.S. presidential election less than a week away, anxiety is high, both across the country and around the world. Many fear the rise of populism and the erosion of democratic norms.
‘The Presidents and the People’ Book Talk
With the U.S. presidential election less than a week away, anxiety is high, both across the country and around the world. Many fear the rise of populism and the erosion of democratic norms. In over two centuries, the United States has had many presidents who pushed on the door of anti-democratic power, but it has also had people who pushed back. Ahead of the election, what lessons can we learn by looking to the past?
Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It
Front page Balkin.com Balkinization an unanticipated consequence of Jack M.
The supreme court’s presidential immunity ruling mocks the rule of law
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Trump’s dangerous attacks on rule of law have US historical precedents
Microsoft Cares About Your Privacy Microsoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
Trump’s dangerous attacks on rule of law have US historical precedents | Corey Brettschneider
‘While commentators and journalists are rightly focused on the danger of the moment, there are historical precedents for what we face today.’ Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP Donald Trump’s threats to democracy – including his promise to govern as a dictator on “day one” and his refusal to abide by the norm of a peaceful transition of power – are often called unprecedented. While commentators and journalists are rightly focused on the danger of the moment, there are precedents for what we face today.
7 books to help you understand Jan. 6
The House select committee hearings on the Jan. 6 insurrection began earlier this month and have already revealed new facts and information about the assault on the U.S. Capitol and the people involved.
Analysis | No, Trump can’t pardon himself or other insurrectionists. Impeachment would strip him of that power.
Reports indicate that President Trump is considering pardoning both himself and others related to the insurrection at the Capitol. At the same time, the House is rapidly moving forward with impeaching Trump for his role. The most coherent constitutional understanding suggests that if the House votes to impeach Trump — even before the Senate begins its trial — he is then barred from issuing a pardon either for himself or those related to the impeachment charges.
The Traditional Interpretation of the Pardon Power is Wrong. And a reply to a critic.
Front page Balkin.com Balkinization an unanticipated consequence of Jack M.
The Traditional Interpretation of the Pardon Power Is Wrong
When Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison for obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering, Judge Amy Berman Jackson concluded, “He was not prosecuted, as some have complained, for standing up for the president. He was prosecuted for covering up for the president.” Stone was scheduled to be incarcerated on July 14, 2020. On July 10, Donald Trump commuted his sentence. Is this particular use of the president’s power constitutional and lawful?
DECISIONS AND DISSENTS OF JUSTICE RUTH BAD... | Kirkus Reviews
This entry in the new Penguin Liberty series focuses on the case writings of the most recognizable associate justice on the Supreme Court. Long before she was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993, Ginsburg, aka the Notorious RBG, was a crusader for such issues as equal protection for women, reproductive freedom, and civil rights.
ON IMPEACHMENT | Kirkus Reviews
Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account.
Opinion | Why President Trump Can’t Pardon Roger Stone
Speculation that President Donald Trump might pardon Roger Stone has reached a fever pitch after Stone’s sentencing by a federal judge and the president’s repeated hints that he thinks the verdict unfair. But fortunately, the Constitution’s framers imagined this nightmare scenario—a suspected criminal president pardoning a co-conspirator—and they put in the Constitution language to legally prohibit the pardon power in exactly this kind of case.
Why President Trump Can’t Pardon Roger Stone
Speculation that President Donald Trump might pardon Roger Stone has reached a fever pitch after Stone’s sentencing by a federal judge and the president’s repeated hints that he thinks the verdict unfair. But fortunately, the Constitution’s framers imagined this nightmare scenario—a suspected criminal president pardoning a co-conspirator—and they put in the Constitution language to legally prohibit the pardon power in exactly this kind of case.
Executive Decisions: A conversation about American politics and the presidency
Corey Brettschneider is a professor of political science at Brown University who has written extensively on constitutional law, freedom of expression and democratic rights. His latest book, The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents, offers a direct response to a question that Donald Trump has managed to raise almost every day since taking office: What exactly is the president of the United States empowered to do?
Opinion | The Supreme Court Should Tell Trump He Is Not Above the Law
Does President Trump have immunity from criminal investigation or prosecution, as his lawyer asserts? The answer is no, and now the Supreme Court has the opportunity to make that clear. Last month, a three-judge panel of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit held unanimously that any immunity President Trump may enjoy does not prevent the Manhattan district attorney from subpoenaing his tax preparer to provide eight years of his corporate and personal tax returns.
Does Trump need to break the law to be impeached? The answer is no
Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters In the coming days, opinions sections and cable news shows will be inundated with discussion about whether President Trump’s attempt to pressure the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, into investigating Joe Biden’s role in a supposed conspiracy was a criminal act. However, the answer to this question alone does not tell us whether Trump should be impeached. The constitutional standard of impeachment – “high crimes and misdemeanors” – is not a legal one.
Robert Mueller just showed why impeachment proceedings against Trump should begin soon
President Donald Trump speaks to the media about the testimony to Congress of former special counsel Robert Mueller, Wednesday, July 24, 2019, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. (Jacquelyn Martin) By Corey Brettschneider July 25 Corey Brettschneider is the author of “The Oath and The Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents.” He is a professor of political science at Brown University and visiting professor of law at Fordham Law School.
Democracy's Midlife Crisis | The Point Magazine
David Runciman is head of the department of politics and international studies at Cambridge University and host of the popular podcast Talking Politics. Danielle Charette and Jacob Hamburger interviewed him last week in Chicago about his most recent book, How Democracy Ends. Originally published on Tocqueville 21, a Franco-American web magazine about contemporary democracy, this interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Republicans claim bill protecting Mueller is unconstitutional. A constitutional scholar explains why they're wrong.
Get the Think newsletter. SUBSCRIBE Nov. 9, 2018 / 9:32 AM GMT By Corey Brettschneider, professor of political science at Brown University Mere hours after Democrats retook the House, President Donald Trump announced the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the appointment of Matthew Whitaker as the acting attorney general.
Executive Decisions: A conversation about American politics and the presidency
Corey Brettschneider is a professor of political science at Brown University who has written extensively on constitutional law, freedom of expression and democratic rights. His latest book, The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents, offers a direct response to a question that Donald Trump has managed to raise almost every day since taking office: What exactly is the president of the United States empowered to do?
Brett Kavanaugh’s Radical View of Executive Power
M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Law And Order Trump’s Supreme Court nominee threatens to undermine the Mueller probe. Continue to article content In Tuesday’s opening session of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, Democratic senators expressed concern about the nominee’s views of presidential power.
Brettschneider: The president can be prosecuted
As President Donald Trump faces deepening legal problems, the country must confront a vital question: Does the Constitution grant a sitting president immunity from criminal prosecution? According to the conventional wisdom, the Justice Department has decided the issue in the president's favor. Yet there's good reason to dispute that conclusion. Supreme Court case law suggests that the president should be denied this special privilege.
Brettschneider: The president can be prosecuted
As President Donald Trump faces deepening legal problems, the country must confront a vital question: Does the Constitution grant a sitting president immunity from criminal prosecution? According to the conventional wisdom, the Justice Department has decided the issue in the president's favor. Yet there's good reason to dispute that conclusion. Supreme Court case law suggests that the president should be denied this special privilege.
Opinion | Yes, it’s possible to indict a sitting U.S. president. Here’s why.
By Corey Brettschneider August 29, 2018 Corey Brettschneider is a professor of political science at Brown University and visiting professor of law at Fordham Law School. He is author of the forthcoming book, “The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents.” As President Trump faces deepening legal problems, the country must confront a vital question: Does the Constitution grant a sitting president immunity from criminal prosecution?
Opinion | Kavanaugh Must Answer the Abortion Question
Would Judge Kavanaugh, an originalist focused on the historical meaning of the text, abide by a ruling like Roe that was not based in the Constitution’s original meaning? If, as his defenders claim, he embraces Justice Scalia’s method of legal interpretation, he may also agree with Justice Scalia’s analysis that there is no textual basis — and therefore no legal basis — for the right to an abortion. Consistent decision making is a critical component of the rule of law.
Kavanaugh Must Answer the Abortion Question
Kavanaugh Must Answer the Abortion Question AP Photo/Dennis Cook, FilePresident Trump is not the first Republican president to promise to appoint Supreme Court justices who would reverse Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion. But this time the risk to that right is immediate. We should presume that Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee for the court, would be the deciding vote to abandon the right, unless he says otherwise.Read Full Article »
How Mueller Can Protect the Russia Probe
How Mueller Can Protect the Russia Probe The special counsel has a powerful tool up his sleeve, if he chooses to use it.Read Full Article »
How Mueller Can Protect the Investigation-Even if He Is Fired
President Donald Trump has been hinting that he might try to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible criminal wrongdoing related to Russian election interference and matters related to it, such as the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. As Trump put it last Monday when asked about his plans for Mueller, “We’ll see what happens. Many people have said, ‘You should fire him.’” Although Trump claims he can fire Mueller directly, many legal scholars disagree.
Opinion Today
The collapse of the Senate health care bill is good news. But I’d suggest that everyone remember March 23, when the House bill also seemed to collapse. Six weeks later, after only minor changes, the House passed a version of the same bill. Don’t assume the Senate bill is dead. For more on health care, you can read pieces from the Editorial Board and Frank Bruni, as well as an op-ed on Medicaid and drug abuse.
Your Travel Ban Isn’t Safe Yet, Mr. Trump
The Supreme Court’s decisions are sometimes opaque, and in this opinion, there is more than meets the eye. The court made it clear that the Fourth and Ninth Circuits were correct to suspend the ban for those nationals who have “bona fide” relationships here in the country. That is a long list: families, university students and professors, business owners and partners.
The Fourth Circuit & Animus Under Mandel
In the recent travel ban appeals, the acting solicitor general (ASG) relied largely on a case called Kleindanst v. Mandel to argue that those outside the country are not protected by the Establishment Clause. But, as the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals observed today in its decision blocking the travel ban, he also unwittingly helped make the case against the ban in his description of Mandel’s holding.
Opinion | Gorsuch, Abortion and the Concept of Personhood
Judge Neil M. Gorsuch has written little about abortion, and we do not know whether he would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established abortion as a fundamental right. But he has expressed a position on two related subjects, assisted suicide and euthanasia. In his Oxford dissertation and a later book, he defended the inviolability of human life.
A Different View of Why the Muslim Ban Violates the Establishment Clause
Yesterday, a diverse group of leading constitutional law scholars—representing many different views about the Establishment Clause—filed an amicus brief in IRAP v. Trump, the Fourth Circuit Muslim Ban case. (They will also file in the Ninth Circuit case.) The brief can be found here. The district courts in Maryland and Hawaii based their decisions on several cases that remain controversial, including Lemon v. Kurtzman.
Why Trump’s Immigration Rules Are Unconstitutional
President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily barring citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from traveling to the United States—as well as denying entry to refugees from Syria for the indefinite future—has provoked a massive public outcry. But while many around the country criticize the new policy for unfairly targeting people of Muslim faith, Trump and his surrogates have been standing by their handiwork.
Born Free, But Not Indifferent
Reactions to Innocence of Muslims, the anti-Islam video made by a Coptic Christian resident of California, have divided on two familiar lines that separate the United States from most other nations in the world. "Prohibitionists" called for free speech to be limited in the face of blasphemous or hateful expression. In the United States, the most vocal defenders of free speech, the "neutralists," have argued that the government should express no opinion about hate speech.
Local Politics Can Slow Trump’s Anti-Constitution Roll
Corey Brettschneider is a professor of political science at Brown University and the author of When the State Speaks, What Should it Say? A man who threatened to create a deportation force that would invade private homes without due process, shut down mosques, torture the families of suspected terrorists, “open up” the libel laws and revoke the citizenship of people exercising their right to free speech has been elected president of the United States.
Trump vs. the Constitution: A Guide
In his speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, Khizr Khan, a Muslim-American lawyer and father of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, waved a pocket copy of the Constitution in the air and challenged Donald Trump. Referencing the Republican’s call to ban Muslims from entering the country—a policy that would’ve prevented Khan’s heroic son from becoming an American—Khan posed a question to Trump: “Have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy.
How to Power Disney World With Rotten Tomatoes
The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C. 1. Making food waste into energy, or how to power Disney World with Florida’s rotten tomatoes. By Tracie McMillan in National Geographic’s the Plate 2. How to crowdsource medical research with video games. By Simon Parkin in the New Yorker 3. Should we let mayors run the world? By the editors of the Christian Science Monitor 4. Why prisoners deserve the right to vote. 5.
Why Prisoners Deserve the Right to Vote
On April 22, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe issued a sweeping executive order that changed the lives of 200,000 ex-felons in Virginia, instantly restoring their right to vote. This order leaves only Kentucky, Florida and Iowa with blanket lifetime disenfranchisement policies for ex-felons. In these three states, no citizens convicted of a felony are allowed to vote, regardless of the crime committed, absent government-granted exceptions to the policy.
A License to Say Anything?
Specialty license plates — which bear the logo of a college or a sports team, or a slogan like “Save Our Seas” or “Stop Child Abuse” — bring in lots of money for state governments, as well as the schools, nonprofit groups, professional organizations and other entities that sponsor them. But these vehicular tags have also become a new frontier in debates over freedom of speech. The United States Supreme Court is hearing a lawsuit by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
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