With the clock almost up on the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency, the University of Illinois College of Law and Illinois Law Review have brought together 30 experts from across the nation to explore the success and failures of the ambitious reform President Trump promised.
On April 29, President Trump’s 100th day, the Illinois Law Review will publish an online symposium tackling the developments of the first 100 days of the Trump administration.
At the heart of the symposium is an April 11 panel discussion hosted by the College of Law at the National Center for Supercomputing Application in Urbana, Illinois. This panel discussed the achievements and shortcomings of a first 100 days that President Trump once promised would “restore prosperity to our economy, security to our communities, and honesty to our government.”
The symposium features media from the event as well as essays by the eight panelists, covering topics ranging from Trump’s impact on international law to his impact on the judiciary to issues of federalism.
“Federalism is substituting, to some extent, for separation of powers. Blue America, which is coastal America, is manifesting push-back. But we have yet to see whether the Supreme Court will push back against Trump or whether they will side with Trump,” said Akhil Amar, professor of law at Yale Law School and leading constitutional scholar, during the April 11 symposium.
Other panelists spoke on freedom of speech and the press, immigration, business and financial reform, foreign affairs, science and technology, and presidential ethics.
“[T]he recent political upheaval should remind us that civil liberties are like muscles — when we do not use them, they atrophy. Maybe the silver lining of the past six months is that, while painful from a free speech perspective, it may have been the pain of a return to the gym after a long and frequently sedentary layoff,” writes Neil Richards, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, in his forthcoming piece Free Speech and the Twitter Presidency.
Addressing immigration during the President Trump’s first 100 days, Erin Delaney, assistant professor of law and political science at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, writes in her forthcoming piece: “[I]n bringing Trump to court, there is always the chance that courts will confirm immigration exceptionalism, solidifying federal power and leaving it unconstrained by constitutional protections. The president plays to win, and these are high stakes indeed.”
The symposium will also feature other essays from legal experts nationwide discussing other topics, such as deregulation, national security, election laws, the environment, healthcare, laws of war, and cybersecurity, all of which will be available online.
The purpose of the symposium is to provide “a sharp analytical eye to key aspects of the administration’s activities during its first 100 days,” writes Jason Mazzone, Co-Director of the Program in Constitutional Theory, History and Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, who helped coordinate the symposium. “Together, the essays provide a comprehensive resource for understanding and debating the initial period of the Trump presidency and for informed evaluation of the administration’s activities in the coming months and years.”
These articles will be the most thorough coverage of President Trump’s administration on his 100th day.
About Illinois Law Review: The Illinois Law Review is an academic publication by the students of the University of Illinois College of Law. Washington & Lee School of Law recognized Illinois Law Review as one of the top-30 student-edited law reviews in the United States.
For further details, please contact:
Benjamin Paulsen
Editor-in-Chief
Illinois Law Review
Tel: (815) 685-8720
bpaulse2@illinois.edu
Bradley Williams
Managing Internet & Symposium Editor
Illinois Law Review
Tel: (630) 220-0492
bcwilliams28@gmail.com