Presidential Power - Tom Jorde - March 12, 2026

Thursday, March 12, 2026 at Noon
Santa Rosa Country Club

with Tom Jorde

Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley Law

Tom Jorde's sponsor is Gabriel Campbell,
WACSC Program Committee

About the Program         

           In this urgent and unsettling talk, Prof. Thomas Jorde tracks the rapid—and largely unchecked—expansion of presidential power as it unfolds in real time, at the very moment when norms are breaking, precedents are hardening, and guardrails are quietly giving way. Through sweeping assertions of emergency authority, aggressive executive orders, and direct challenges to Congress, the courts, and federal agencies, the modern presidency is being fundamentally transformed.

          Mr. Jorde leads us into the legal machinery driving this shift: the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling in Trump v. United States, the Court’s embrace of the Unitary Executive Theory, and the growing reliance on the shadow docket to greenlight far-reaching executive actions, including the wholesale remaking of federal agencies. He also exposes the fragility of the remaining limits—moments when the Court has pushed back, such as blocking the removal of Federal Reserve officials or rejecting the deployment of National Guard troops when statutory lines were crossed.

          Anchored in recent Supreme Court decisions and the actions of Donald Trump’s administration, this talk confronts a sobering question: when extraordinary presidential powers become routine—and resistance becomes exception—what remains of American democracy?

          Thomas Jorde is Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley School of Law, where he taught for decades after a career spent inside the very institutions that define—and restrain—executive power. After graduating from law school, Jorde clerked for Judge Stanley A. Weigel of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco and for William J. Brennan Jr., one of the most influential justices of the modern Supreme Court. He later practiced litigation in San Francisco before joining the Berkeley Law faculty in 1978.

          Jorde has served in Washington, D.C. as a special assistant to the Director of the Bureau of Competition at the Federal Trade Commission, and as a special master for Judge Thelton Henderson of the U.S. District Court—roles that placed him at the intersection of executive authority, judicial oversight, and the rule of law. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Brennan Center for Justice, a leading national authority on democracy and constitutional governance.

          A scholar and coauthor of Antitrust, Innovation, and Competitiveness and Intellectual Property in the New Technological Age, Jorde brings rare perspective to the question of presidential power from a lifetime spent watching how legal precedents are made, stretched, and sometimes quietly abandoned.

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