W&L’s Liberating Ideas Program to Host a Conversation with Jack Goldsmith ’84 The Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School will discuss executive power under the Constitution.

By Brian Laubscher
April 3, 2026

Washington and Lee University’s Liberating Ideas program will welcome Jack Goldsmith ’84, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and former member of the George W. Bush administration, for a conversation on executive power at 5 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, in Stackhouse Theater. The discussion is free and open to the public.

The moderated conversation will be introduced by Lucas Morel, John K. Boardman Jr. Professor of Politics and director of W&L’s Liberating Ideas program. After the brief introduction, Goldsmith will engage in discourse with Mark Rush, Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Professor of Politics and director of International Education. Following the conversation, audience members will be encouraged to ask questions.

The talk will explore the scope and limits of presidential power under the U.S. Constitution. The framers left the definition of executive authority deliberately broad, and successive presidents have tested those boundaries in different ways. Drawing on Goldsmith’s experience, Rush and Goldsmith will examine how the balance of power between the branches has shifted over time, not only through presidential ambition but also through Congress’ willingness to delegate its own authority. Together they will consider what that evolving dynamic means for the current political environment.

“The role of executive power in a constitutional republic has been a contentious one ever since the Constitution’s adoption,” said Morel. “Hearing from an insider in the Bush administration who is now a leading constitutional law professor will provide timely and instructive lessons as our nation finds itself at war against Iran.”

Goldsmith earned a B.A. from W&L, followed by a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Oxford (U.K.) and a J.D. from Yale Law School. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson and Judge George Aldrich on the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal. He taught at the University of Virginia School of Law from 1994 to 1997 and the University of Chicago Law School from 1997 to 2002.

In 2002, Goldsmith entered the Bush administration as special counsel to the general counsel of the Department of Defense as the government was developing its response to the Sept. 11 attacks. He was confirmed by the Senate in 2003 to lead the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, a post he held until 2004 when he joined the Harvard Law School faculty. A leading scholar of presidential power, national security law and international law, Goldsmith is also a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and co-founder of Lawfare and Executive Functions.