Latest in Appointments, Confirmations & Budgets
The president can potentially paralyze an agency by deliberately choosing not to nominate anyone in hopes of preventing the agency from functioning at full capacity or perhaps even from functioning at all.
President Trump's nominations of Courtney Elwood to be CIA General Counsel and John Sullivan to be DoD General Counsel are good news for the national security law community.
This morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing for Rod Rosenstein, President Trump's nominee for Deputy Attorney General, and Rachel Brand, President Trump's nominee as Associate Attorney General. Video of the hearing is available at CSPAN.
A crop of cases that have reached the Supreme Court this month (in which I’m counsel of record on behalf of the Petitioners) provide a useful chance to consider the newly relevant principle of civilian control of the military from a different angle.
Judge Gorsuch's compassion for the unpopular and vulnerable and his sense of connection between regard for disfavored groups and respect for the separation of powers is notable—with the exception of a 2011 decision on qualified immunity.
A review of legal opinions by Judge Neil Gorsuch of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, President Trump's pick to fill the ninth seat on the Supreme Court, on immigration, separation of powers, the Fourth Amendment, administrative law, international law, and foreign affairs.
According to a White House press release, President Trump will nominate Rod Rosenstein (U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland) as Deputy Attorney General, Rachel Brand (Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and former Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy) as Associate Attorney General, and Steven Engel (former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel) as Assistant Attorney General. The press release is available below.
As noted here, a law forbidding retired military officer from serving as Secretary of Defense until seven years after retirement currently stands in the way of the Mattis nomination, and will require fresh legislation to overcome. Now the path towards obtaining that legislation is beginning to come into focus.
Over at War on the Rocks, I have a post explaining that a new statute will be needed in order for General Mattis to serve as Secretary of Defense. It's been done once before, with George Marshall during the Truman Administration.
Most citizens assume that all of the law Congress writes is public. That is not, in fact, true. Our general norm of publishing law has a significant and largely overlooked legislative exception: classified addenda associated with three annual national security acts.