Government,
Constitutional Law
Feb. 20, 2020
Moving away from checks and balances
The intense partisanship surrounding the Trump impeachment, and more generally around the Trump presidency, has obscured the extent to which we have moved away from checks and balances and to an authoritarian presidency perhaps more than ever before in American history. Lest this seem hyperbole, consider the legal developments of the past year.
Erwin Chemerinsky
Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law
UC Berkeley School of Law
Erwin's most recent book is "Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism." He is also the author of "Closing the Courthouse," (Yale University Press 2017).
Justice William O. Douglas wrote, "As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
The intense partisanship surrounding the Trump impeachment, and more generally around the Trump presid...
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