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

The president is a transgressive person, unaware of certain norms and willing to break known conventions. This posed a problem for Comey, who thought it was inappropriate for the president to speak to him about Flynn or ask for his loyalty. But asking for loyalty is what politicians do, including newly minted politicians. And the FBI does not have the legal independence that Comey wishes it had.
Saikrishna Prakash POLITICO Magazine
"The president stirs up a lot of emotions in people," Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash, a James Monroe distinguished professor of law at the University of Virginia and senior fellow at the Miller Center, tells Newsweek. "You're going to find a lot of people will go into Comey's testimony who hate Trump, and are inclined to think he’s already committed an impeachable offense, while others who love Trump will try to find falsities left and right in what he says."
Saikrishna Prakash Newsweek
The idea is to have an outsider, someone not connected to the executive, investigate persons close to the president with the hope that the public and Congress will accept whatever emerges from the inquiry.
Saikrishna Prakash Miller Center
"James Comey needed to be ousted, whoever was in the White House," Miller Center Senior Fellow Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional law expert, tells POLITICO Magazine
Saikrishna Prakash POLITICO Magazine
President Trump continues to be unconventional. But he also seems to be adjusting to the realities of the presidency, governing in a more typical way than when he started. That was the conclusion of a panel of experts asked by The Upshot to rate 28 major news events in the administration’s first 100 days for importance and normality.
Saikrishna Prakash The New York Times
Yesterday, the President declared war against Syria. Or at least he did if we understand the Constitution as the Founders did.
Saikrishna Prakash Just Security