Harvard Law School Rappaport Forum: Does the Law Provide for a Unitary Executive?

Video Description

On March 12, guest speakers Aditya Bamzai and Peter Shane joined moderator Susan Davies for a discussion on the unitary executive theory, a constitutional law theory that states that the president has sole authority over the executive branch. Professor Bamzai, the Martha Lubin Karsh and Bruce A. Karsh Bicentennial Professor of Law at UVA Law, is an administrative law expert who has argued cases relating to the separation of powers and national security in the U.S. Supreme Court, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, D.C. Circuit and other federal courts of appeals. Professor Shane is a leading constitutional and administrative law scholar with a special focus on the American presidency and the separation of powers, and is both a distinguished scholar in residence at NYU Law and a professor emeritus at Ohio State's Moritz College of Law. Susan Davies, former head of the Office of Legal Policy in the U.S. Department of Justice, was formerly the Joseph Story Senior Lecturer on Law at HLS. The event was part of the Harvard Law School Rappaport Forum series, established in 2020 to promote and model rigorous, open, and respectful discussion of vital issues facing the world. Read additional event coverage on Harvard Law Today: https://hls.harvard.edu/today/what-power-does-the-president-have-over-the-federal-bureaucracy/ Learn more about the Rappaport Forum: https://hls.harvard.edu/harvard-law-school-rappaport-forum/ View past Rappaport Forum events: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2q2U2nTrWq3rbCshZ4_WZoYSwIgBn9O0