AUWCL Professors Provide Legal & Policy Analysis Following Election & Inauguration of President Trump

Prof. Daskal on Hardball
Prof. Jennifer Daskal on Hardball with Chris Matthews.

On the Immigration Executive Order and Subsequent Court Cases:

Professor Rebecca Hamilton in Foreign Policy: “If an administration really was concerned about preventing future terrorist attacks, this is not the executive order they would have come up with,” Hamilton said.

Professor Jennifer Daskal was featured on the NBC Nightly News discussing the White House's potential next moves with the travel ban after their defeat in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “I think it’s a losing case,” she told NBC. “So you go to the Supreme Court, that’s three losses in a row, that’s not smart legally and it’s really not smart politically.” Professor Daskal was also interviewed live on the “Chris Hayes Show” and “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” both on MSNBC, the week of Feb. 6, 2017.

Professor Stephen Wermiel to Vocativ: “[I]t is going to end up in the Supreme Court sooner or later.”

Professor Stephen Wermiel to “Talking Points Memo” – “The order doesn’t specifically ban Muslims; it’s not the same thing that Trump talked about during the campaign. Because it identifies people based on country of origin rather than their specific religion, it’s less obviously religious discrimination than what he discussed previously.”

Professor Rebecca Hamilton writing for the national security blog Just Security: “Trump’s Executive Order takes the ‘countries of concern’ list and turns it on its head […] The painful irony is that a national from one of these countries is more likely to be the victim of terrorism than a perpetrator of it.”

Practitioner-In-Residence for the International Human Rights Clinic Sherizaan Minwalla wrote in the Daily Beast: “The executive action is clearly aimed at predominantly Muslim countries, and the language regarding violence against women demonized entire populations, ignoring the reality that gender based violence is a problem in the US and globally.”

Professor Diego Rodriguez-Pinzon, co-director of the Academy of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, spoke to Telemundo about how Trump could potentially change the language of his ban to create a new executive order. One option, he said in the interview in Spanish, is “implementing language that doesn’t suggest that one religion is going to be prioritized over other religions.”

On March 6, the Trump administration issued an updated immigration executive order, seeking to protect itself against the kind of due process claims that led to the previous order's downfall before the Ninth Circuit. Professor Jennifer Daskal shares her thoughts on the ongoing dangers of this revised order on Just Security.

Professor Amanda Frost responds to President Trump's revised executive order on immigration that continues to target citizens from predominantly Muslim countries on The Hill. The new order alleviates some, but not all of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal's concerns of violating the Establishment Clause.

Just a day after President Trump’s revised immigration order was released, Hawaii’s state’s attorney asked the federal district court in Hawaii to issue a temporary restraining order to block the new order. Professor Rebecca Hamilton responds to the revised order as more organizations and officials consider similar action: “As a matter of policy, the revised order is as flawed as the original. As a matter of law, it’s on much more solid footing.”

Supreme Court Nomination, Environmental Policy, DOJ, and more:

Professor Stephen Wermiel discussed “what comes next” in the Supreme Court confirmation process with the New York Times following the nomination of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch. In addressing the practice sessions Judge Gorsuch would face prior to the actual Senate hearings, Wermiel said “Ideally, their goal would be that a nominee goes in there facing no question that he had not already heard in one of those sessions.”

Professor David Hunter to DC Bar News: “There are a lot of programs that fly underneath the radar screen. Cut the funding and you’ve pretty much cut the enforcement of the rule or the program.”

Professor Stephen Wermiel to Vice News: “The right to privacy is not expressly mentioned in the Constitution. So [Gorsuch] might have trouble finding it in the Constitution, and if he has trouble finding it in the Constitution, then he can’t find a right to privacy for LGBT issues.”

Professor Bill Snape in Environment and Energy Daily following the nomination of Rick Perry as Energy Secretary: Bill Snape, the senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, scoffed at the notion of natural gas as a climate solution, saying it ignores emissions of methane associated with oil and gas production, given that the warming potential of methane is far greater than CO2."His natural gas numbers don't add up," Snape said yesterday.

Professor Bill Yeomans to US News & World Report: "The challenge for an incoming administration is always to make those policy changes [in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice] without making law enforcement look like a purely political undertaking […] it hurts the legitimacy of the institution."

In an article in the Los Angeles Times about drug industry deregulations proposed by the Trump Administration, Professor Lewis Grossman is quoted about the drug companies’ direct-to-consumer outreach: “The idea is that consumers are central players in their health management and therefore have a right to be informed of different drugs."

Professor Diego Rodriguez-Pinzon, co-director of the Academy of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, spoke with CNN en Español regarding Attorney General Sessions' meetings with the Russian Ambassador and the implications for the investigation into the Trump Campaign.

In The Christian Science Monitor, Professor William Yeomans remarks on Attorney General Sessions’ crime problem that some say may not exist. “Sessions seems to be fighting battles from decades ago with tools that we have moved beyond as a society.” Yeomans continued, “Sessions’ remarks sound more like a political statement designed to gin up fear to justify a return of harsh practices than a serious agenda for meaningful policing."

In an article on CNN Politics, Professor Jennifer Daskal comments on the Department of Justice releasing documents pertaining to Supreme Court Justice nominee Neil Gorsuch’s tenure during the Bush Administration. "Judge Gorsuch's response indicates that he was significantly involved in at least three cases in which the Department of Justice made very broad claims about the scope of executive power in matters of national security," Daskal said. "It will be important for the committee and the public to learn more about what he advised at the time and his views now."

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