Academic

Weiss on the Post-Partisan Presidency

By Lawrence Solum

David C. Weiss (University of Michigan at Ann Arbor) has posted In Defense of the Post-Partisan President: Toward the Boundary between 'Partisan' Advantage and 'Political' Choice on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This Essay examines what it means, if anything, to be ?post-partisan.? To that end it develops indicia of Executive Branch partisanship, which it uses to move toward a distinction between typical ?political? action and decision making as compared to those actions taken or decision-making processes entered into for ?partisan,? party-based advantage. It argues that while a clean distinction is problematically formalistic, an analysis of Executive Branch behavior allows points of comparison for the claim that certain administrations are more or less partisan than others.

Relying on this framework, the Essay discusses the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, arguing that the former was the most party-focused in at least a half-century. It then examines what the Obama Administration?s claims to being ?post-partisan? actually mean and discusses the relevance for public policy, concluding that post-partisanship is a more humble goal than bipartisanship but that given the current American political landscape - characterized by parties that are more internally coherent and polarized from each other than at any time in generations - Obama?s post-partisanship is a valuable addition to the dynamics of American politics and serves a legitimizing function for a number of administrative and constitutional law doctrines.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on July 29, 2009 (boomark / email).