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 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
“If she is asked about Obamacare and Roe and all these things, she's just going to say, ‘I can't discuss cases that might come before me,’ ” said Saikrishna Prakash, a University of Virginia law professor who knows Barrett professionally.
Saikrishna Prakash VOA News
"Biden will not be president, if at all, until Jan. 2020," Prakash said. "If the Senate consents and the president appointments prior to that day, the appointment is complete and cannot be withdrawn by Biden or anyone else. If the Senate does not act prior to Biden's inauguration, then of course the nomination can be withdrawn. Trump can withdraw any nomination of his at any time. All nominations expire at the end of a Senate session according to Senate rules."
Saikrishna Prakash WUSA TV
“Our living presidency subverts the idea of an executive subject to the Constitution and to the laws,” writes Saikrishna Prakash in his new book, The Living Presidency, from Harvard University Press. “If presidents can unilaterally alter the Constitution, they can circumvent the document that spells out and limits their authority. The president’s express obligation to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution’ becomes irrelevant in the face of a practical power to alter, undermine, and subvert the Constitution.” Prakash, a UVA Law professor and Miller Center senior fellow, discusses his pointed and strikingly relevant critique of the modern presidency in a discussion hosted by Miller Center Director William Antholis.
Saikrishna Prakash Miller Center Presents
“He can summon them back into session by citing this constitutional authority," Prakash said. "Now whether individual members of Congress comply or not is another question, but that’s never to my knowledge been tested. I don’t think the president’s ever tried to forcibly round up members of Congress.”
Saikrishna Prakash WUSA9
That the House abused its power of inquiry does not mean it lacked authority to demand financial records of President Trump. Not all abuses of power are unconstitutional.
Saikrishna Prakash The Hill