Associate Dean Amar Comments on Lawmakers' Budget Suit for WSJ
Associate Dean Vikram Amar commented for the Wall Street Journal on the California Senate's plans to file a lawsuit against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger challenging his authority to make $500 million in line-item vetoes in the state's recently passed budget. Also quoted in the article is State Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a 1984 graduate of King Hall, who told the WSJ that Californians "elected a governor, not an emperor."
Associate Dean Amar stated that at base the legislators were taking issue with the $500 million and not just the extent of the governor's executive power. "Steinberg and others Democrats really are fighting for the programs that they think are battered," he said, adding that there is little precedent for this sort of suit. "Whatever the courts do, they'd have to be breaking some new ground."
Vikram Amar, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Law with the UC Davis School of Law, is a national authority in the fields of constitutional law, civil procedure, criminal procedure, and remedies. His biweekly column for FindLaw.com, the leading provider of online legal information, centers on his expertise in constitutional law.