Are courtesy meetings nuked?
Image source: National Review By Mark Owens Process and procedure have begun to dominate debates about controversial or salient nominations to the federal bench. Frustration emerged when the regular procedures… Read More
Congress and trade policy: Time to refresh the trade advisory system?
Image source: USTR By Ryan Dukeman From Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound,” to Pat Buchanan’s promise to “make America first again,” to the 2016 presidential election, international trade has long… Read More
LegBranch Conversations: An interview with David Schoenbrod
David Schoenbrod is the Trustee Professor of Law at New York Law School. Over the course of his career, he has been a leading practitioner and scholar of environmental… Read More
Congressional behavior in the Trump era
Image source: NRO By Jordan M. Ragusa No doubt one of the most discussed political issues in the last two years is whether and how Donald Trump’s presidency is changing… Read More
Concentrating implementation: How ideological agreement between the House and Senate affects delegation to the bureaucracy
Image source: The Hill By Jordan Carr Peterson Many scholars and observers of American legislative politics focus on the substantive public policies contained in laws Congress enacts. For instance,… Read More
To delegate or not to delegate: Committee staff, congressional capacity, and executive authority
Image source: POGO By Austin Bussing From repeated, thinly-veiled threats to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller to drastic tariff hikes on steel and aluminum, the administration of president Donald J. Read More
A discretionary spending tale of two parties: James Madison rears his head
Image source here By John Haskell A close examination of federal discretionary spending totals over the last 25 years reveals an unmistakable trend: under Democratic presidents discretionary spending increases… Read More
Democratic decay, legislative diplomacy, and the House Democracy Partnership
Image source: HDP By Ryan Dukeman Until very recently, “democratic backsliding” was a term consigned mostly to the annals of academic theory, concerned chiefly with perceived “democracy deficits”… Read More
When Congress won the American people’s respect: Watergate
Those of us who make our livings trying to improve the state of American politics must constantly strike a balance between realism and hopefulness. There are a lot of… Read More
Can Member Characteristics Predict Committee Oversight Activity?
Image source By Brian D. Feinstein Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress last week drove home the gulf in outlook between Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. Companies like… Read More