100 Days of the Trump Administration
The "100 Days of the Trump Administration" symposium was a public event held on May 2, 2025, at Stanford Law School in California. Organized by the Stanford Neukom Center for the Rule of Law, the Stanford Law Review, and the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, the symposium aimed to examine the constitutional tensions revealed by recent executive actions during President Trump's second term.
The event focused on three interconnected constitutional themes: the scope and limits of executive power over agencies, judicial power to check executive overreach, and the independence of the Department of Justice and the legal profession. Rather than focusing narrowly on particular political disputes, the symposium explored enduring constitutional questions about the separation of powers brought into sharp relief by recent events.
The symposium featured leading scholars, former prosecutors, and practitioners who provided concise, accessible analyses addressing both doctrinal questions of immediate relevance to pending litigation and broader constitutional principles at stake. Each contributor refined their panel presentation into a focused piece that captured their key arguments and analysis, ensuring that the published symposium directly reflected the scholarly exchange that occurred during the live event.
This event was open to the public, with registration required. It was particularly relevant for legal professionals, scholars, and students interested in constitutional law, executive authority, and the independence of the legal profession.
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Speakers(6)
Bob Bauer
Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence; Co-Director of the Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic at NYU School of Law
Bob Bauer is Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the New York University School of Law and Co-Director of NYU Law’s Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic. Bob was General Counsel to President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential election campaigns, and then served as White House Counsel to the President from 2009 to 2011. In 2020, he was a senior adviser (on leave from NYU Law) to the Biden presidential campaign. In 2013, President Obama named him to be Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. In 2021, President Biden named him to be Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. In 2024, Bob was a recipient of the American Bar Association’s “Unsung Heroes of American Democracy” award. Bob is the author of The Unraveling: Politics without Ethics and Democracy in Crisis (2024). He is also co-author with Jack Goldsmith of After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency (2020), books on federal campaign finance, and numerous articles on law and politics for legal periodicals. He is a Contributing Editor of Lawfare and has published opinion pieces on constitutional and political law issues in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic, among other publications. Bob has co-authored numerous bipartisan reports on policy and legal reform, including “The American Voting Experience: Report and Recommendations of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration” (Presidential Commission on Election Administration, 2014); “The State of Campaign Finance in the United States” (Bipartisan Policy Center, 2018); and “Democratizing the Debates” (Annenberg Working Group on Presidential Campaign Debate Reform, 2015.
Francis Fukuyama
Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow, FSI; Director, Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy at Stanford University
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford’s Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.
Martin S. Lederman
Professor from Practice; Senior Fellow, Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown Law
Marty Lederman has taught at the Georgetown University Law Center since 2005, with an emphasis on constitutional law; separation of powers; the law of religion; national security topics; and executive branch lawyering. He is the Senior Fellow of the Supreme Court Institute at the Law Center. He has published articles on Congress’s authority to regulate the Commander in Chief’s conduct of war; the constitutionality of wartime military courts; and the law of religion, among other topics in constitutional law. He also contributes regularly to Just Security, Balkinization and other blogs and periodicals, writing principally on issues relating to constitutional law, the Supreme Court, war powers, and religion and the law. Professor Lederman was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2009 to 2010 and again from 2021 to 2023.
Melissa Hooper
Senior Fellow at German Marshall Fund
Melissa Hooper is a Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund focused on rule of law and democracy. Her work includes analysis of the legal impacts of the Trump administration’s destruction of government agencies – she herself was a Senior Advisor on Democracy and Governance at USAID until earlier this year. A lawyer by training, she has worked in coalition with lawyers in Central Europe, in Ukraine, and in Russia over the past 15 years, inside and outside government, to combat anti-democratic policies targeting judges, media, and civil society, safeguard democracy, and promote accountability. Her expertise spans congressional policy-making, teaching, amicus litigation, and public advocacy.
Pamela S. Karlan
Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law; Co-Director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School
A productive scholar and an award-winning teacher, Pamela S. Karlan is co-director of the school’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, where students litigate live cases before the Court. One of the nation’s leading experts on voting and the political process, she has served as a commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission, an assistant counsel and cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and (twice) as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (where she received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service – the department’s highest award for employee performance – as part of the team responsible for implementing the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor). Professor Karlan is the co-author of leading casebooks on constitutional law, constitutional litigation, and the law of democracy, as well as numerous scholarly articles. She is co-reporter on the American Law Institute’s forthcoming Restatement on Constitutional Torts. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1998, she was a professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law and served as a law clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Abraham D. Sofaer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Karlan is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute.
Sonia Mittal
Former Senior Counsel and Assistant US Attorney at United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia
Sonia recently served as Senior Counsel and Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. She was honored in that role on multiple occasions, including as the recipient of the United States Attorney’s Impact Award. She previously served as a Trial Attorney in the National Criminal Enforcement Section of the United States Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, where she brought the first charges in the Department’s investigation into criminal price-fixing in the generic pharmaceutical industry. That investigation resulted in top executive pleas to felony price-fixing charges, charges against or resolutions with seven pharmaceutical companies, and the largest criminal penalty for a domestic cartel. Sonia clerked for Judge Denise L. Cote in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In addition to a J.D. from Yale Law School, she holds a Ph.D in political science and B.A. in history from Stanford University. Sonia currently serves on the Yale Law School Association Executive Committee, the advisory board of the Katzmann Initiative on Improving Interbranch Relations and Government at the Brookings Institution, and several councils at Stanford University. She will join Yale Law School as a Visiting Lecturer of Law and the Peter Gruber Fellow for the Rule of Law in July 2025.
Event Details
- Date
- April 10, 2025
- Location
- 🇺🇸 Stanford, United States
- Stanford Law School, Room 290
- Pricing
- Free
- Audience
- Legal professionals, scholars, students
- CLE Credits
- CLE accreditation pending
- Attendees
- Not specified