Why do Presidents Push the Limits - 25 Years of Asking Questions

[Robert H. Jackson Center]

Why do Presidents Push the Limits? A Free Public Lecture at the Robert H. Jackson Center Wednesday, May 20 | 6–7 p.m. | 305 E. Fourth St., Jamestown

How much authority does the president actually have, and how do we know when that authority has been exceeded? That question feels new and urgent right now, but it is actually old and persistent — and Justice Robert H. Jackson had a great deal to say about it.

This Wednesday, the Robert H. Jackson Center welcomes Gerard N. Magliocca, Distinguished Professor and the Lawrence A. Jegen III Professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, for the next installment of its 25 Years of Asking Questions lecture series. Professor Magliocca will examine Jackson's celebrated concurring opinion in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), the Steel Seizure Case, in which the Supreme Court rejected President Truman's attempt to take control of the nation's steel mills during the Korean War.

Jackson's opinion in that case did more than decide the immediate dispute. It established a three-tiered framework for evaluating when presidential actions fall within constitutional limits and when they do not — a framework that legal scholars, federal courts, and policymakers still rely on today. Professor Magliocca's new book, The Actual Art of Governing: Justice Robert H. Jackson's Concurring Opinion in the Steel Seizure Case, offers a deep analysis of that opinion and its continuing relevance to debates over executive power.

Professor Magliocca earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford and his law degree from Yale. He has held the Fulbright-Dow Distinguished Research Chair at the Roosevelt Study Center in the Netherlands, was a Fellow at the Washington Library at Mount Vernon, and is the author of five books on constitutional law. His biography of Justice Bushrod Washington received the Erwin N. Griswold Prize from the Supreme Court Historical Society.

Copies of The Actual Art of Governing will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information or to reserve your spot, visit roberthjackson.org/event/25-years-presidents/.

The 25 Years of Asking Questions series is sponsored by Southern Chautauqua Federal Credit Union.