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

“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
Chief Justice Roberts' two opinions were a study in subtle contrasts, observes University of Virginia Law professor Saikrishna Prakash. "Oddly enough, it seems like the New York state prosecutor has more authority than Congress does, " he said.
Saikrishna Prakash NPR
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George F. Will joins Saikrishna Prakash, professor of law at the University of Virginia, for a conversation on Prakash's new book, The Living Presidency: An Originalist Argument Against Its Ever-Expanding Powers. They explore the expansion of presidential power from the founding era to today; provide their take on what, if any, constraints there may be on executive power; and whether originalism can provide a solution. National Constitution Center President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen moderates.
Saikrishna Prakash National Constitution Center
The system can still be saved. But their struggle for independence didn't begin with the current president.
Saikrishna Prakash The Washington Post