How Much Power Vice Presidents Really Have & Why JD Vance’s Comments Are Alarming Lawyers

The role of the Vice President of the United States is an important one, but what actual power does it hold? Recently, vice president candidate JD Vance spoke publicly about the power of the vice presidency, the role of presiding over the electoral count as President of the Senate, and what he would have done if he was in former Vice President Mike Pence’s shoes on January 6th 2021. In this episode, Craig is joined by Matthew Seligman, a fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, as they discuss the power of the vice presidency, the presiding role over the electoral count, and clarify the role of the vice presidency. Mentioned in This Episode: How to Steal a Presidential Election (co-authored with Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig), Yale University Press (2024) "How JD Vance Disqualified Himself” by Matthew Seligman (The New York Times) The Ramifications of NSA Monitoring on Attorney-Client Privilege and the Bill of Rights featuring John Eastman & Erwin Chemerinsky (2014)