Career
From 2004 to 2005, Michaels served as a law clerk to Judge Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He then served as a law clerk to Justice David Souter of the United States Supreme Court from 2005 to 2006. [1] [2] [3] Following his clerkships, Michaels worked for the international law firm of Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC as an associate in the National Security Law and Public Policy Group. [2]
Michaels joined the UCLA School of Law as an assistant professor in 2008. In 2013, he was awarded full tenure at UCLA. [2] Michaels teaches courses on administrative law and national security law. [2]
Michaels is an elected member of the American Law Institute. [7] The American Constitution Society has twice awarded Michaels with the Cudahy Award for scholarly excellence in regulatory and administrative law [8] — first in 2010 for his article "Privatization's Pretensions," on policymakers' use of privatization to substantively alter policies, [9] and again in 2016 for his article "An Enduring, Evolving Separation of Powers." [10] The Columbia Law Review published responses to the latter article by Professor Cristina Rodríguez and Professor David Fontana. [11] [12] Responding in the Harvard Law Review to a related article by Michaels, "Running Government Like a Business . . . Then and Now," Professor Nicholas Parrillo wrote that Michaels "makes a powerful argument" that salarization, civil service protection, and citizen participation rights "have been key to the emergence of an effective, legitimate, and meaningfully democratic government in the United States." [13]
Written work
Michaels' first book, Constitutional Coup: Privatization's Threat to the American Republic, was published by the Harvard University Press in 2017. [2] In 2018, the Yale Journal on Regulation held a web symposium on the book, featuring commentary from noted administrative law scholars, including Christopher Walker, Emily Bremer, and Aaron Nielson, who would go on to serve as Solicitor General of Texas. [14] [15] [16] [17] In Nielson's review, he stated that while he and Michaels disagreed on "many things[,]" he believed Michaels was "quite right that pretend privatization is a problem" — referring to "situations in which the government tries to avoid being labeled as the government, even though it still wants to exercise the powers of government," such as the example of Amtrak in Department of Transportation v. Association of American Railroads . [17] [18] [19] In future-Third Circuit nominee Jennifer Mascott's review, she complimented Michaels' book for being "engaging, brilliantly written, and insightful" but concluded that his "administrative separation of powers" proposal was "at odds with, and fundamentally undermines, the constitutionally mandated separation of powers already in place." [20] The symposium additionally featured reviews by academics Jeffrey Pojanowski, Miriam Seifter, Sam Halabi, and Daniel Hemel. [21] [22] [23] [24] Pojanowski also reviewed the book in the Michigan Law Review . [25] In a review published by the Harvard Law Review , Professor Sabeel Rahman wrote that Constitutional Coup was an "important work" that defended the administrative state "as a central pillar of our modern constitutional structure that is increasingly under threat." [26] In a Washington Monthly book review, Joshua Alvarez wrote that Michaels "provides a useful reframing of what business-like government really means." [27]
Michaels' second book, Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy, was co-authored by David Noll and published by Atria/One Signal, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in 2024. [28] [29] The book concerns right-wing violence and authoritarianism in the United States, and proposes legal responses by Democratic-majority states. [28] [30]
Michaels has provided legal analysis for the New York Times, [31] [32] Washington Post, [33] [34] Los Angeles Times, [35] [36] [37] [38] Time magazine, [39] Foreign Affairs, [40] [41] CNN, [42] and the Boston Globe. [43] [44]
