Skip to main content
Julian Mortenson

Julian Mortenson

James G. Phillipp Professor of Law at University of Michigan Law School specializing in constitutional law, legal history, and presidential power.

Jul 9, 2026

Thomas DonnellyMODERATOR
5:57
It's very challenging.
5:57
That will happen at least once.
5:59
[laughs] Um- So I would co-sign, I think, essentially everything that Ilya and Jillian have said about the larger big picture moving parts of how to think about this term, and also this term in longer arc.
6:11
I liked also what, um, Sarah said in the last, uh, panel about not thinking about this term as simply a term sitting alone, but rather as a term as all terms are, and perhaps the last couple of terms more so than many, um, that are part of a story or a-a longer arc of time, a decade, two decades.
6:27
And on, uh, uh, on my sort of big picture summary thoughts about executive power in particular, I'd flag what I think of as a, a really profound and persistent debate between two very different schools of thought about how constitutional separation of power should be addressed.
6:43
Um, on one hand, there's a perspective that takes executive, judicial, and legislative powers as silos, as mutually exclusive, and as something to be guarded, watched over, and decided upon by the Supreme Court.
6:56
On the other side, um, uh, of this sort of large sort of [laughs] I almost said a gillion, and now I did say a gillion, this, this dialectical clash between two different ways of seeing, uh, separation of powers and thinking about the separation of powers is a vision of the separation of powers in which what counts as executive power, what counts as legislative power, and what counts as judicial power are contextual, respond to current circumstances, and can be reframed often so that a thing which is executive power in some dimensions is also legislative power in other dimensions.

17 MINS LATER

Thomas DonnellyMODERATOR
24:54
Yeah, it's very quick.

We value your privacy

We use cookies to understand how you use our platform and to improve your experience. Click “Accept All” to consent, or “Decline non-essential” to opt out of non-essential cookies. Read our Privacy Policy.