Research Areas
Administrative and Regulatory Governance
Popular Essays
The Local Version of Project 2025 Is Already Causing Devastation , Slate , Aug. 26, 2024 (with David Noll).How Trump is Dismantling a Pillar of the Administrative State , The Guardian , Nov. 7, 2017.Trump’s Quiet Attack on the Regulatory State is Another Part of His Broader Class War , Slate , Dec. 22, 2017 (with Rajesh Nayak).The War on Federal Employees , The American Prospect , Dec. 11, 2017.How Trump is Dismantling a Pillar of the Administrative State , The Guardian , Nov. 7, 2017.Trump and the “Deep State,” Foreign Affairs (Sept./Oct. 2017), 52-56.
Political Violence and Democratic Instability
Popular Essays
Vigilante Nation (Simon & Schuster 2024) (with David Noll)The Political Violence Spilling Out of Red States , The American Prospect (Oct. 10, 2024) (with David Noll).Jan. 6 Was Just a Start , Los Angeles Times (Oct. 8, 2024) (with David Noll).If the Supreme Court Lets Other States Copy Texas’s Abortion Law, It’ll Be Chaos , Washington Post , Jan. 10, 2022.We are Becoming a Nation of Vigilantes , New York Times , Sept. 4, 2021 (with David Noll).What to do in Case of a Constitutional Crisis , CNN , Feb. 2, 2017.The Founders anticipated Trump. We can handle this , Los Angeles Times , Nov. 11, 2016.
Corporate Governance Amidst Political and Legal Dysfunction
Academic Writing
What About Private Options? , in Politics, Policy, and Public Options 58-79 (Ganesh Sitaraman & Anne Alstott, eds.) (Cambridge University Press 2021).Government Market Participation in the Postliberal U.S. Political Economy , 120 Columbia Law Review 465-547 (2020).Sovereigns, Shopkeepers, and the Separation of Powers , 166 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 861-900 (2018).Tech Giants at the Crossroads: A Modest Proposal , Hoover Institution (Series Paper No. 1809) (Jul. 30, 2018).
New Governance (Running Government Like a Business)
Academic Writing
The Constitutional Contours of Privatization, in The Cambridge Handbook of Privatization 144-58 (Avihay Dorfman & Alon Harel, eds.) (Cambridge University Press 2021).
Constitutional Coup (Harvard University Press 2017)Government Market Participation as Conflicted Government, in Administrative Law from the Inside Out: Essays on Themes in the Work of Jerry L. Mashaw 451-473 (Nicholas R. Parrillo, ed.) (Cambridge University Press 2017).
Running the Government Like a Business… Then and Now , 128 Harvard Law Review 1152-1182 (2015).Privatization’s Progeny , 101 Georgetown Law Journal 1023-1088 (2013).Privatization’s Pretensions , 77 University of Chicago Law Review 717-780 (2010).
Constitutional Law
Popular Essays
Law Schools have a Supreme Court Problem , Chronicle of Higher Education , Jul. 18, 2022 (with Aziz Huq).The Supreme Court’s Liberals Should Follow Justice Rehnquist’s Lead—dissent, dissent, dissent , Los Angeles Times , Jul. 9, 2018.The Founders anticipated Trump. We can handle this , Los Angeles Times , Nov. 11, 2016.
National Security Law and Policy
Academic Writing
Separation of Powers and Centripetal Forces: Implications for the Institutional Design and Constitutionality of Our National-Security State , 83 University of Chicago Law Review 199-220 (2016).Private Military Firms, The American Precedent, and the Arab Spring , 48 Stanford Journal of International Law 277-288 (2012).The (Willingly) Fettered Executive: Presidential Spinoffs in National Security Domains and Beyond , 97 Virginia Law Review 801-898 (2011).The Homeland Security Deputization Dilemma, 37 Administrative & Regulatory Law News 5 (Fall 2011).
Deputizing Homeland Security , 88 Texas Law Review 1435-1473 (2010).All the President’s Spies: Private-Public Intelligence Gathering in the War on Terror , 96 California Law Review 901-966 (2008). Beyond Accountability: The Constitutional, Democratic, and Strategic Problems with Privatizing War , 82 Washington University Law Quarterly 1001-1127 (2004).
Popular Essays
The Military Deployment to the Border is a Shameless, and Dangerous, Stunt , Washington Post , Nov. 2, 2018 (with Jeffrey Smith).Should America Also Have a Private Spying Agency? , Newsweek , Dec. 11, 2017Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon want to re-privatize the military. That would be a big mistake , Los Angeles Times , July 20, 2017.
© Jon Michaels, 2025