Experts

Saikrishna Prakash

Fast Facts

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • Domestic Affairs
  • Law and Justice
  • Governance
  • Political Parties and Movements
  • Politics
  • The Presidency
  • Supreme Court

Saikrishna Prakash, faculty senior fellow, is the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Albert Clark Tate, Jr., Professor of Law at the University of Virginia Law School. His scholarship focuses on separation of powers, particularly executive powers. He teaches constitutional law, foreign relations Law and presidential powers at the University of Virginia Law School.

Prakash majored in economics and political science at Stanford University. At Yale Law School, he served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and received the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law, Economics and Public Policy. After law school, he clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing in New York for two years, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and as an associate professor at Boston University School of Law. He then spent several years at the University of San Diego School of Law as the Herzog Research Professor of Law. Prakash has been a visiting professor at the Northwestern University School of Law and the University of Chicago Law School. He also has served as a James Madison Fellow at Princeton University and Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Among Prakash's articles are "50 States, 50 Attorneys General and 50 Approaches to the Duty to Defend," published in the Yale Law Journal; "The Imbecilic Executive," published in the Virginia Law Review; and "The Sweeping Domestic War Powers of Congress," published in the Michigan Law Review. He is the author of The Living Presidency: An Originalist Argument against Its Ever-Expanding Powers and Imperial from the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive.

Saikrishna Prakash News Feed

n 2006, years before Christine Blasey Ford publicly accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her when they were both in high school, the Yale Law Journal published a provocative paper. The paper, “How To Remove a Federal Judge” by law professors Saikrishna Prakash and Steven D. Smith, lays out a road map for, well, how to remove a federal judge without resorting to the impeachment power. It argues that a provision of the Constitution stating that federal judges and justices “shall hold their offices during good behaviour” is widely misunderstood.
Saikrishna Prakash Vox
Saikrishna Prakash of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center told the Review-Journal, “I don’t know of anything that I would think would constitute an impeachable offense. I don’t think (Kavanaugh) lied before the Senate. If you think he did lie before the Senate, that would be for me an impeachable offense.”
Saikrishna Prakash Las Vegas Review-Journal
“When the Constitution itself contemplates an amendment process, assumes it will be begun and consummated in a reasonable period of time, not a multigenerational process,” says Saikrishna Prakash, a University of Virginia law school professor and Miller Center senior fellow who recently wrote the article “Of Synchronicity and Supreme Law” on the subject for the Harvard Law Review. “The idea that we want to have a consensus for a legal change, we can’t say it’s a consensus if people are giving consent across decades.”
Saikrishna Prakash Northern Virginia Magazine
Supreme Court Justices have full‐time day jobs. Justices have duties as federal judges on the apex court and many reasonably regard these responsibilities as requiring their complete and undivided attention. But Justices can do so much more, and they can be so much more. The Constitution does not bar them from serving their country in other ways. From our nation's inception, several Justices also have occupied other high offices and taken on other vital responsibilities. This article considers early examples of double duty and the constitutionality of these off‐the‐bench pastimes.
Saikrishna Prakash Journal of Supreme Court History
Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu shared an excerpt of a recent House hearing on Twitter, in which law professor Saikrishna Prakash, who was called as a witness by House Republicans, admitted that he “[doesn't] believe” the Trump administration has the immunity they claim.
Saikrishna Prakash Vanity Fair
Again, the doctrine undergirding all those objections is legally controversial, even as it has been maintained by presidents of both parties. In a separate House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, the Republican-selected witness repeatedly rejected the constitutional doctrine of absolute immunity, arguing that those in Hicks’ position should be compelled to testify fully. That Republican-selected witness, University of Virginia School of Law professor Saikrishna Prakash, said the administration’s absolute immunity claim should be knocked down.
Saikrishna Prakash Slate