Photo

With Congress determined to do nothing for the foreseeable future, the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law has come up with 15 executive actions that President Obama could take in three areas: voting rights, criminal justice and the rule of law.

Some are a bit airy — writing reports and convening commissions — but several are concrete. Mr. Obama should pay attention.

In the area of voting:

• Instruct federal agencies — like the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Indian Health Service and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services — to encourage the many millions of Americans they work with each year to vote and help them register, as motor vehicle bureaus do in some states.



• Order federal contractors to disclose their political spending. The Brennan Center said the administration drafted an executive order like that in 2011 but dropped it after encountering opposition from Congress (surprise!).

• Ask the Securities and Exchange Commission to require that corporations disclose their political spending (something Congress would never do).

• Ask the Federal Elections Commission to bolster requirements for disclosing outside spending on political ads.

In the area of criminal justice:

• Direct the Justice Department to identify prisoners who received unreasonably long sentences as part of the so-called “war on drugs” and consider commuting them. (The Justice Department has already asked defense lawyers to come up with lists of prisoners who deserve a presidential pardon or commutation, but it could take a more active role.)

• Order federal agencies to stop asking job applicants if they have a criminal record, except for law enforcement positions. That question denies millions of people even the chance of a job interview and contributes to recidivism rates. The center said 68 million Americans now have criminal records (a disproportionate number are African American).

• Order the attorney general to ban discriminatory law enforcement practices, like the New York Police Department’s Muslim surveillance program (which, by the way, is ending. Police Commissioner William Bratton announced on Tuesday he would disband the unit that in charge of the surveillance).

As for the rule of law:

• Ask the attorney general to “survey the use of ‘secret law’ in the federal government and develop procedures to make the law public.” That’s one area where Congressional inaction is not primarily to blame; Mr. Obama’s record on transparency is frankly terrible.

If Mr. Obama were to follow any of these recommendations, the right would almost certainly accuse him of behaving like a dictator. But as Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center, wrote in his foreword to the report: “President Obama has issued executive orders at a slower pace than all recent predecessors. Obama issued 147 such orders in his first term” — compared to 247 by Richard Nixon, 169 by Gerald Ford, 213 by Ronald Reagan and 173 President George W. Bush.