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

University of Virginia’s Miller Center Senior Fellow Saikrishna Prakash outlines what we should be thinking about when it comes to the Trump situation regarding Cohen and Manafort. He’s on “Charlottesville Right Now” with Les Sinclair. Saikrishna Prakash is a faculty senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. His scholarship focuses on separation of powers, particularly executive powers. After law school, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Saikrishna Prakash WINA
“It’s really not that much different from the investigation,” says Saikrishna Prakash, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Virginia law school and a senior fellow at the school’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. “The indictment often follows an investigation. It doesn’t have any consequences for him serving as President.” That said, there’s nothing that would prevent Trump from being charged after he left office.
Saikrishna Prakash Time
“Giuliani has been all over the press about how the president wants to testify but not with respect to all of these questions [about obstruction of justice]. This has been going on for months. Perhaps Mueller believes that he just has to ask these questions and play this out to see what the president’s response is.”
Saikrishna Prakash ABC News
Progressives are right to fear Judge Brett Kavanaugh, but it is not his views on abortion, race or gay marriage that will haunt them. Instead, Kavanaugh’s threat to liberalism lies in his hostility to the modern technocratic state, where federal bureaucracies rule with few checks and balances.
Saikrishna Prakash Los Angeles Times
Saikrishna Prakash, who co-authored the Yale Law Journal article with Devins, said that as the practice has grown in popularity, attorneys general around the country have an increasing awareness of their ability not to defend state laws. "In terms of opportunity, I would just say as more state attorneys general do this, it becomes an option," said Prakash, who is a law professor at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the university's Miller Center.
Saikrishna Prakash Des Moines Register
Twenty states have filed a lawsuit against the federal government arguing that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional—and this time the federal government agrees. When the Justice Department filed a brief last week taking the states’ side, critics furiously insisted that the failure to defend ObamaCare is a threat to the rule of law. Don’t be moved by selective outrage. This refusal to defend is actually more restrained than President Obama’s. And, as before, the courts will decide the ultimate questions.
Saikrishna Prakash The Wall Street Journal