Some government traditions with no legal basis — pardoning turkeys, for example — are silly but harmless. Others are not. Among them is an arcane, century-old practice known as “blue-slipping,” under which a single senator can block a president’s judicial nominee. The country would be better off without it. When the president sends a candidate for the federal bench to ...

We’re past the point of shifting blame. We know who gave us the presidency of Donald Trump, and it wasn’t Hillary Clinton or Jill Stein or James Comey. The culprit was democracy. Even if you defend democracy on the grounds that Trump lost the popular vote, it’s still a lame argument. After all, what kind of sensible political system generates ...

To critics of President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, it may seem like presidential fiat is a very dysfunctional way to do foreign policy. How, exactly, is such overwhelming power consistent with checks and balances? How can one man, even if he is the president, single-handedly alter our international obligations? The short answer ...