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

Whether the Constitution grants the President a removal power is a longstanding, far-reaching, and hotly contested question. Based on new materials from the Founding and early practice, we defend the Madisonian view that the “executive power” encompassed authority to remove executive officials at pleasure. This conception prevailed in Congress and described executive branch practice, with Presidents issuing commissions during pleasure and removing executive officers at will.
Saikrishna Prakash Harvard Law Review
“You have to wonder what purpose is served by repealing the 2002 AUMF in isolation,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a law professor at the University of Virginia and expert on presidential powers. “By the time you get to Vietnam and beyond, the executive branch believes that it has constitutional authority to use massive amounts of military force without going to Congress,” he said.
Saikrishna Prakash The Wall Street Journal
With two U.S. presidents now facing special counsel investigations and one facing legal jeopardy on a host of other matters, questions over how and when a president might face legal action are swirling. Attorney General Merrick Garland recently appointed a special counsel to investigate President Joseph Biden and his administration’s handling of classified documents, months after an investigation of President Donald Trump’s storage of classified files at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida commenced. Trump is also facing criminal investigations and civil litigation involving his actions on Jan. 6, his tax and business activities, alleged election interference and more.
Saikrishna Prakash UVA School of Law
Judge Aileen Cannon "is worried about that 40% of the country that thinks the Justice Department has been unleashed on the former president,” said Saikrishna Prakash, Faculty Senior Fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.
Saikrishna Prakash Wall Street Journal
Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson faced a second day of questioning Wednesday by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Saikrishna Prakash, a University of Virginia law professor and former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, and Melody Barnes, executive director of the Karsh Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia, join Judy Woodruff to discuss.
Saikrishna Prakash PBS NewsHour
Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson spent hours on defending her representation of Guantanamo Bay detainees and denying she'd been too lenient in child pornography cases. Saikrishna Prakash, a University of Virginia law professor and former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, and Margaret Russell, a law professor at Santa Clara University, join Judy Woodruff to discuss the hearing.
Saikrishna Prakash PBS NewsHour