Stewart Chang

Which of your recent books or articles should I read?

Our National Psychosis: Guns, Terror, and Hegemonic Masculinity, 53 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 495 (2018). 

The publication of this article coincided with the one-year anniversary of the shootings at Mandalay Bay. As our nation continues to suffer through the growing epidemic of gun violence, I try to consider the problem as less of an issue of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment, than one rooted in the same inequities of race and gender that have motivated the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. 

What is the most significant issue facing your field and how should it be addressed?

Immigration has become a significant testing ground where the president has been testing the expansiveness of his emergency powers, first with the Muslim ban and now with his declaration of national emergency concerning the southern border. Congress had previously given broad discretion to the executive office in these matters on the assumption that typically a president would act in the best interest of the country and that in times of real emergency that president would need the ability to act swiftly. This president, however, is atypical. I see two potential resolutions, neither of which I find particularly appealing: 1) either Congress or the Judiciary move to constrict the powers of the president in these matters, which could significantly weaken the power of the presidency as an institution and create potential problems when our nation does face a true emergency in the future; or 2) Congress and the Judiciary do not intervene, thereby providing precedent for even more expansive applications of emergency executive power, which holds the potential to undermine the system of checks and balances which our democracy was founded upon.