Join IGP for an Across the Aisle conversation with Thomas H. Lee and Gillian Metzger, moderated by Matthew Waxman.
Debates over the nature and scope of US presidential power go back to the Constitutional Convention. During the Cold War, concerns about the “imperial presidency” led to legal, administrative, and normative reforms in the 1970s. In the 1980s–and again after 9/11–the debate shifted to whether the presidency had become too weak to manage evolving national security threats, leading proponents of a stronger executive to advance the Constitutional theory of a “unitary executive.”
With recent Supreme Court decisions supporting an “energetic presidency,” and President Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024, advocates of a more expansive view of presidential power appear to be winning the contemporary debate. How strong should the American presidency be?
Panelists:
- Thomas H. Lee, Leitner Family Professor of International Law, Fordham Law School. Professor Lee, who clerked for Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court, served as an active-duty US naval cryptology officer. He was Special Counsel to the General Counsel of the US Department of Defense in the first Trump administration.
- Gillian Metzger, Harlan Fiske Stone Professor of Constitutional Law, Columbia Law School. Professor Metzger, who clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court, served in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel in the Biden Administration as Deputy Assistant Attorney General and as Acting Assistant Attorney General.
- Matthew Waxman (moderator), Liviu Librescu Professor of Law, Columbia Law School. Professor Waxman, who clerked for Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court, served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Director for Contingency Planning and International Justice at the National Security Council, and as executive assistant to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in the George W. Bush administration.
Introductory remarks by Timothy Naftali, Senior Research Scholar and IGP Faculty Advisory Board Member, Columbia SIPA; CNN contributor
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