Book Talk: The U.S. Presidency: Power, Responsibility, and Accountability

Join Richard W. Painter, S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law at Minnesota Law and E. Thomas Sullivan President Emeritus and Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, Dean Emeritus at Minnesota Law, and Dean Emeritus at University of Arizona Rogers College of Law as they discuss their newest publication.

About The Book

In The U.S. Presidency, E. Thomas Sullivan and Richard W. Painter examine the evolving state of presidential power in the United States, specifically facilitating discussion and debate concerning the power, responsibility, and accountability of U.S. Presidents. How is power acquired? How is it used or misused? How are the President's powers checked and how are they held accountable to and by the people? Rather than promote a single theory of presidential power, Sullivan and Painter answer these questions with a wide range of arguments for and against power in a broad number of circumstances and Supreme Court holdings. Grounded in the intersection of law, politics, and history, this book engages readers across disciplines, helping them understand the remarkable transformation of the United States presidency. Objective and timely, The U.S. Presidency makes a case for a democratic model of self-government centered on accountability and the rule of law.

Purchase The U.S. Presidency: Power, Responsibility, and Accountability from Cambridge University Press. You may also purchase the book at the reception.

Reviews

"So much of today’s turmoil could have been prevented if political leadership better understood our Constitution and its concept of shared powers as brilliantly laid out in The U.S. Presidency by Professors Sullivan and Painter. How well we understand shared responsibility in sports yet find it so elusive in governance. The U.S. Presidency is an essential read for all citizens and should be required reading for all elected officials." - Arne H. Carlson - Governor of Minnesota (1991–1999)

"This is a wonderfully wide-ranging and informative look at presidential power throughout American history. Sullivan and Painter guide readers through the major constitutional theories and events that have shaped the presidency and that continue to animate debates over presidential power today. An important and timely work." - Heidi Kitrosser - William W. Gurley Professor of Law, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law

"Professors Sullivan and Painter have created a thorough and insightful overview of the legal and political episodes that have helped to transform the presidency into something radically different from the checked-and-balanced Chief Magistrate envisioned by the Framers. Their study is invaluable for understanding how dramatic increases in presidential power and responsibility have outpaced the development of mechanisms for presidential accountability." - Peter M. Shane - Distinguished Scholar in Residence, New York University School of Law

About Our Speakers

Richard W. Painter

Professor Richard W. Painter received his B.A., summa cum laude, in history from Harvard University and his J.D. from Yale University, where he was an editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. Following law school, he clerked for Judge John T. Noonan Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and later practiced at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City and Finn Dixon & Herling in Stamford, Conn.

He has served as a tenured member of the law faculty at the University of Oregon School of Law and the University of Illinois College of Law, where he was the Guy Raymond and Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Professor of Law from 2002 to 2005. He has been the S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Minnesota Law School since 2007.

From February 2005 to July 2007, he was associate counsel to the president in the White House Counsel’s office, serving as the chief ethics lawyer for the president, White House employees, and senior nominees to Senate-confirmed positions in the executive branch. He is a member of the American Law Institute and is a reporter for the new ALI Principles of Government Ethics. He has also been active in the Professional Responsibility Section of the American Bar Association. He is a board member and vice chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as well as a founding board member of Take Back our Republic, a campaign finance reform organization.

Painter has also been active in law reform efforts aimed at deterring securities fraud and improving ethics of corporate managers and lawyers. A key provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, requiring the SEC to issue rules of professional responsibility for securities lawyers, was based on earlier proposals Painter made in law review articles and to the ABA and the SEC. He has given dozens of lectures on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to law schools, bar associations, and learned societies, such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Painter has on six occasions provided invited testimony before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate on government ethics, securities litigation, and/or the role of attorneys in corporate governance.

Painter’s book Getting the Government America Deserves: How Ethics Reform Can Make a Difference was published by Oxford University Press in January 2009. His coauthored book (with Professor Claire Hill) Better Bankers, Better Banks: Promoting Good Business Through Contractual Commitment was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2015. From 2014-15 he was a residential fellow at Harvard University's Safra Center for Ethics, which funded his work on a third book, Taxation only with Representation: The Conservative Conscience and Campaign Finance Reform (Take Back our Republic, 2016).

He has written op-eds on government ethics for various publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, and he has been interviewed several times on government ethics and corporate ethics by national news organizations, including appearances on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell (MSNBC), Anderson Cooper 360 (CNN), CNN News, Fox News, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and Minnesota Public Radio News. Painter has also given expert testimony in cases involving securities transactions and the professional responsibility of lawyers. He testified as a defense witness in SEC v. The Reserve Money Market Fund (SDNY, November 2012), a jury trial of an SEC enforcement action against the founders of the world’s oldest money market fund that ended with a defense verdict on all of the fraud counts.

Painter is the coauthor of two casebooks: Securities Litigation and Enforcement (with Margaret Sachs and Donna Nagy; West Academic Publishing, 2003; second edition, 2007; third edition, 2011) and Professional and Personal Responsibilities of the Lawyer (with Judge John T. Noonan Jr.; Foundation Press, 1997; second edition, 2001; third edition, 2011). He has written dozens of articles, book reviews, and essays.

E. Thomas Sullivan

 Tom Sullivan is the President Emeritus of the University of Vermont and Dean Emeritus of the University of Minnesota Law School and University of Arizona Rogers College of Law. Below are selected highlights from Sullivan's CV:

Professional and Academic Experience

• President Emeritus and Professor of Law and Political Science, The University of Vermont
• President, The University of Vermont
• Provost and Senior Vice President and Professor of Law, The University of Minnesota
• Dean of the Law School and Professor of Law, University of Minnesota
• Dean of the College of Law and Professor of Law, University of Arizona
• Associate Dean and Professor of Law, Washington University in Saint Louis
• Trial attorney, Donovan Leisure Newton and Irvine, NYC/DC
• Federal Prosecutor, United States Department of Justice, Attorney General's Honors Program, Washington DC
• Law Clerk, United States District Court (S.D. Florida)

Visiting Faculty Appointments

• Life Fellow Member, Cambridge University Clare Hall College (Lifetime appointment)
• Cambridge University (UK) Faculty of Law and Clare Hall College (Three visiting appointments)
• New York University Law School
• University of California, Berkeley Law School
• Georgetown University Law School (Three visiting appointments)

Publications

14 Books and over 75 Articles and Essays. Subjects include: Antitrust Law, Constitutional Law, Constitutional History, Complex Litigation, Federal Courts and Civil Procedure. 

Practice and Teaching Experience

Antitrust law, Federal Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Complex Litigation, Federal Courts and Civil Procedure, Constitutional History, and Government Regulation of Business

Selective Professional Awards and Appointments

• President of the American Bar Foundation (ABF) Board of Directors (The ABF is the premier center on empirical research in law and social policy.)
• Reporter, American Law Institute (ALI)
• Honorary Doctor of Law Degree, Vermont Law School
• Life Member, American Law Institute (ALI)
• Life Fellow, American Bar Foundation
• American Bar Association (ABA) Robert J. Kutak Award
• American Bar Association (ABA) J. William Elwin Award
• Stanley V. Kinyon Teacher of the Year Award, The University of Minnesota Law School.
• Chair, Association of American Law Schools Section on Antitrust and Economic Regulation
• Chair, The ABA Section of Legal Education
• Consultant, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on judicial nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court of Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan
• Chair, Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics for the Minnesota Supreme Court
• Co-chair, Federal Judicial Selection Committee, Minnesota
• Special Counsel, State of Minnesota - Appointment by the Attorney General and Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court to investigate illegal political contributions
• Member, ABA's President's Commission on the Future of the Profession
• Board Member, The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB)