Yale Law Journal Symposium on National Emergencies

February 15, 2020 was the one-year anniversary of President Trump’s declaration of a “national emergency” at America’s southern border to raid military funds for the purpose of building a wall despite Congress’s refusal to fund that initiative. $ 11 billion and counting have been unilaterally reallocated this way based on emergency governance. Three days ago, the president extended the so-called emergency for another year. The Yale Law Journal commissioned three essays on emergency power for the occasion by Robert L. Tsai, Steve Vladeck, and Cecillia Wang. Read more.

The essay of Cecellia Wang of the ACLU sets out three reforms that would prevent future abuses of this weapon by President Trump and his successors: (1) providing for meaningful review of presidential claims of “emergency” and “national interest”; (2) abolishing the punitive and militarized approaches to immigration enforcement enacted in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), and restoring basic principles of due process to the Immigration and Nationality Act; and (3) policies that recognize immigrants and refugees as fellow human beings and not as criminals.

KJ