Government Accountability in the Trump Era

Undergraduate / Graduate

The second Trump Presidential Administration has made novel and broad claims of executive authority across many areas of government activity. Students will explore the legal and normative bases for these claims, how they are changing the existing systems of government oversight, and how courts are shaping public understanding of these issues. The first half of the course will cover foundational concepts of government structure: checks and balances, federalism, and the role of the federal courts, and the growth of the administrative state. In the latter half of the course, we will focus on Trump Administration claims of authority in the domain of domestic law enforcement and the future of policing and police reform.