Our constitutional system is defined by a balance between the public's need for transparency and the government's need to have a zone of secrecy around decision making. Both are important, yet they are mutually exclusive.

Institutionalizing dissent in our agencies moves us toward a healthier democracy and helps fulfill our founders' vision.

I think that the terms of the Affordable Care Act do give the states a fair amount of wiggle room and to do things as they see fit. The Affordable Care Act was not designed as some sort of one-size-fits-all solution from Washington. There's lots of discretion given to the states.

In 2006, I argued and won Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a Supreme Court case that struck down President George W. Bush's use of military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay.

If you are looking for someone to break the mold, the last guy you look to is Robert Mueller.

Sometimes momentous government action leaves everyone uncertain about the next move.

Everything having to do with President Trump and Russia, whether it is Mr. Trump's demand for an investigation into the investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller, or whether Mr. Trump will testify, requires an answer to one essential background question: Can Mr. Mueller seek to indict the president?

When it comes to investigating a president, the special counsel regulations I had the privilege of drafting in 1998-99 say that such inquiries have one ultimate destination: Congress.

Americans can tolerate some secrecy, particularly when it is rooted in protection of the public's interests. But when the claims appear to hide wrongdoing, they begin to curdle.

Appointing special counsel Robert Mueller to probe Russian meddling in the 2016 election (and any possible ties to President Trump's campaign) was the only choice the Justice Department had. This is the best way to deal with the conflicts and potential conflicts of interest these matters posed.

Even if I might say to myself, 'I don't need health insurance. I won't get sick,' the fact is, as human beings with mortality, we are going to get sick, and it's unpredictable when.

One thing we know about government after the New Deal is that checks and balances through whistle-blowing is terrible policy.

I can tell you that standard D.O.J. protocol is that you let official acts speak for themselves. You don't go and spin your action. For example, when I ran the Solicitor General's office, there would be all sorts of times when the litigants would make something up, and we would just never comment to the press. It is not what we do.

Every time a president invokes executive privilege, there are three relevant audiences he has to think about: the courts, Congress, and the public.

We have learned Trump's disregard for the truth, and the rule of law is real.

The public has every right to see Robert S. Mueller III's conclusions. Absolutely nothing in the law or the regulations prevents the report from becoming public. Indeed, the relevant sources of law give Attorney General P. William Barr all the latitude in the world to make it public.

Prosecutors use the conspiracy doctrine to punish two or more people who merely agree to commit a criminal act. They don't even have to actually perform the act; they just need to have agreed to do so.

Trump abuses every privilege in the same way. It's kind of like King George. Take a legal concept and then stretch it beyond all recognition, and that's what you have Trump doing.

The special-counsel regulations were drafted at a unique historical moment. We were approaching the end of President Bill Clinton's second term, and no one knew who would be elected president the next year.

I didn't go to fancy schools or come from money or from a family that valued law or public speaking in any shape or form.

At times, President Trump has behaved far worse than Nixon did.

I never want to be in the business of predicting what the U.S. Supreme Court will do.

I like doing scholarship for its own sake.

Even though Mr. Trump can give his campaign as much of his own money as he wants to, he can't ask other people to front the money for him and promise to pay them back later without reporting the arrangement in a timely fashion to the Federal Election Commission.