# Philip Wallach

> Philip Wallach is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies America's separation of powers, with a focus on the relationship between Congress and the administrative state. His 2023 book Why Congress argues that the legislative branch sits at the heart of the constitutional system and warns that its self-imposed irrelevance is letting the executive and the courts rush into the vacuum. A Princeton-trained scholar and a fixture in debates over regulatory policy, DOGE, and congressional reform, he writes for outlets ranging from National Affairs to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

- **Role:** Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
- **Organizations:** American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, R Street Institute, House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** PhD and MA in Politics, Princeton University, BA, College of Social Studies, Wesleyan University
- **Known for:** Author of Why Congress (Oxford University Press, 2023), named one of the Wall Street Journal's best books on politics of 2023, Author of To the Edge: Legality, Legitimacy, and the Responses to the 2008 Financial Crisis (Brookings Institution Press, 2015), Senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute studying the separation of powers

## Career timeline

- **2015** — Published To the Edge: Legality, Legitimacy, and the Responses to the 2008 Financial Crisis with Brookings Institution Press while a senior fellow in governance studies at Brookings
- **2018-2020** — Resident Senior Fellow at the R Street Institute
- **2019** — Served as a fellow with the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress
- **2023** — Published Why Congress with Oxford University Press; named one of the Wall Street Journal's best politics books of the year
- **2025** — Continued as senior fellow at AEI, writing extensively on Congress's response to DOGE and executive power

## Achievements

- Author of Why Congress (Oxford University Press, 2023), named one of the Wall Street Journal's best books on politics of 2023
- Author of To the Edge: Legality, Legitimacy, and the Responses to the 2008 Financial Crisis (Brookings Institution Press, 2015)
- Senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute studying the separation of powers
- Served as a fellow with the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress
- Widely published in National Affairs, National Review, Law & Liberty, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Fortune, and the Los Angeles Times

## Latest updates

- **2025** — Writing at AEI on Congress's passivity in the face of DOGE, rescissions, and expanding executive power, arguing lawmakers could reassert their spending authority well within undisputed constitutional bounds
- **2026** — Appeared on PBS's Firing Line alongside Yale Law's Oona Hathaway to debate Congress's diminished power and how to fix it

## Links

- Website: https://www.whycongressbook.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-wallach-7a173243
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/philip_wallach

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/philip-wallach
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Last updated: 2026-06-02