Executive Branch Lawfare News

Lawfare’s Publishing a Book: Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith’s “After Trump”

David Priess, Benjamin Wittes
Monday, August 17, 2020, 12:06 PM

Available for preorder now.

"After Trump" by Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith will be released on Sept. 15

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

We are thrilled to announce Lawfare’s newest endeavor to bring you information, analysis, and deep insight at the nexus of national security, law, and policy: Lawfare Press, our new book publishing imprint, is publishing its first book.

And, if we do say so ourselves, we’ve found a spectacular way to come out of the gate: “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency,” by Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, will be released on Sept. 15, in paperback and electronic formats.

Bauer and Goldsmith provide a comprehensive roadmap for reform of the presidency in the post-Trump era—whether that comes in four months or four years. In 14 chapters they offer more than fifty concrete proposals concerning presidential conflicts of interest, foreign influence on elections, pardon power abuse, assaults on the press, law enforcement independence, special counsel procedures, FBI investigations of presidents and presidential campaigns, the role of the White House counsel, war powers, control of nuclear weapons, executive branch vacancies, domestic emergency powers, how one administration should examine possible crimes by the president of a prior administration, and more. Each set of reform proposals is preceded by rich descriptions of relevant presidential history, and relevant background law and norms, that place the proposed reforms in context. All of the proposals are prefaced by a chapter that explains how Trump (and, in some cases, his predecessors) conducted the presidency in ways that justify these reforms.

“After Trump” will be essential reading for the coming debate on how to reconstruct the laws and norms that constitute and govern the world’s most powerful office. It’s hard to imagine two better co-authors for the task. Both served in senior executive branch positions—in the administrations of Barack Obama and George W. Bush, respectively—and have written widely on the presidency here on Lawfare and elsewhere.

About the authors:

Bob Bauer served from 2010-2011 as White House counsel to President Barack Obama, who in 2013 named Bauer to be Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. He is a professor of practice and distinguished scholar in residence at New York University School of Law, as well as the co-director of its Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic.

Jack Goldsmith served as assistant attorney general, Office of Legal Counsel from 2003-2004, and special counsel to the Department of Defense from 2002-2003. He is the Learned Hand professor at Harvard Law School, co-founder of Lawfare, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

The book is available for pre-order here.

Interview requests and other media contact: AfterTrump@skdknick.com


David Priess is Director of Intelligence at Bedrock Learning, Inc. and a Senior Fellow at the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security. He served during the Clinton and Bush 43 administrations as a CIA officer and has written two books: “The President’s Book of Secrets,” about the top-secret President’s Daily Brief, and "How To Get Rid of a President," describing the ways American presidents have left office.
Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.

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