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

During a Miller Center discussion Wednesday, panelists representing the Miller Center and Politics Department analyzed exit polling statistics and electorate data to provide the University community with clarifications and predictions about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. During the discussion, all four panelists — Saikrishna Prakash, Law professor and Miller Center senior fellow, politics Prof. Jennifer Lawless, Miller Center Director William Antholis, and Mary Kate Cary, Miller Center practitioner senior fellow — said that the election was too close to call and fielded questions about the closeness of the race and what the ultimate result could mean for the future of each party and the nation.
Saikrishna Prakash The Cavalier Daily
On the day after the 2020 presidential election, four Miller Center experts examine the results by looking at exit polling and analyzing state data to see what it reveals about the electorate. Which issues seemed to dominate? Where were the critical districts that decided the election? And could the decision go to the Supreme Court?
Saikrishna Prakash Miller Center Presents
UVA is fortunate to have many resources in the study of democracy, from the Democracy Initiative, launched to answer big questions about democracy around the world, to the Miller Center of Public Affairs, one of nation’s top centers for presidential history and scholarship, to the Center for Politics, the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the School of Law, where scholars can answer any number of questions generated by this close race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. Even as results kept slowly arriving, these scholars were hard at work providing analysis, including quick, timely posts on a page tracking the 2020 Election and its aftermath, and live events, such as a Wednesday afternoon webinar at the Miller Center delving into the data we have so far.
Saikrishna Prakash UVA Today
For a closer look at the legal questions raised during Tuesday’s confirmation hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Judy Woodruff talks to the University of Virginia’s Saikrishna Prakash, a former law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, and Georgetown University’s Victoria Nourse, who was chief counsel to Vice President Joe Biden in 2015 and 2016.
Saikrishna Prakash PBS NewsHour
The Constitution places the authority to declare war with Congress. Nonetheless, since the 1950s, modern presidents have assumed the authority to use military force in conflicts that include Korea, Grenada, Haiti, Kosovo and Libya.
Saikrishna Prakash The Washington Post
"The Court plays an outsize role in constitutional law," says Saikrishna Prakash, the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia Law School. "These nine people decide what our Constitution means."
Saikrishna Prakash USA Today