Goldsmith & Bauer in Lawfare
Lawfare‘s Laura A. Dickinson covered proposals by Co-Chairs Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer for reforming the Insurrection Act:
[T]he Insurrection Act’s expansive language, particularly in Section 253, leaves it vulnerable to abuse, prompting growing calls from legal scholars and commentators for Congress to reform the law and impose tighter constraints on the president’s ability to invoke it. Experts across the political spectrum, including Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, the Brennan Center for Justice (primarily through the work of Elizabeth Goitein and Joseph Nunn), the Cato Institute, the American Law Institute, Harold Koh, Mark Nevitt, and William Banks, have put forward reform proposals. These proposals include adding more specific, substantive limits on the circumstances in which the president can deploy the military domestically; eliminating references to private militias; and adding more robust procedures to ensure transparency, set time limits without explicit congressional authorization, require the concurrence of military and local officials, and allow judicial review. Although some reforms have been introduced in Congress, none has been enacted.