Michael Stern

Michael L. Stern is an attorney, commentator and teacher specializing in legal issues affecting Congress and the legislative process. He served as Senior Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives from 1996 to 2004, where he advised and represented the House leadership, committees, members, officers and staff on a wide range of legal matters including investigations, ethics, election contests, campaign finance, and the implementation of the Lobbying Disclosure and Congressional Accountability Acts. His responsibilities included advising and assisting House committees on matters relating to their oversight and investigatory activities. He represented the House and its components in litigation before state and federal courts, as well as in administrative proceedings before the Congressional Office of Compliance.

Stern also served as Deputy Staff Director for Investigations for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, where he led the committee’s oversight and investigatory activities, was responsible for the committee’s hearings on the homeland security and intelligence reform recommendations of the 9/11 commission, and played a key role in the negotiation and drafting of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

Stern was appointed by the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as special counsel to inquire into the conduct of former Representative Randall “Duke” Cunningham, who had been a member of the committee prior to his criminal conviction and resignation from Congress.

Since his time on the Hill, Stern has worked on issues of constitutional and congressional reform. From 2009 to 2016, he was involved in efforts to persuade state legislatures to apply for an Article V convention to propose constitutional amendments. He was a founding member of the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force and served on the board of the Committee for a Fiscal Responsibility Amendment. He wrote articles and papers on the constitutional amendment process, testified before state legislatures, and worked with congressional stakeholders. He also developed model legislation, the Delegate Limitation Act, designed to ensure that an Article V convention could not propose amendments outside the scope of the state application for a convention; variants of this legislation have been enacted in numerous states.

Stern is a Senior Fellow at Good Government Now, an organization which seeks to enhance Congress’s institutional capacity to conduct oversight and investigations of the executive branch in order to reestablish an appropriate constitutional balance between the legislative and executive branches. He was responsible for developing and drafting a proposed rule, supported by Good Government Now, to strengthen Congress’s power to enforce investigative demands and subpoenas to the executive.

Stern writes and speaks on legal issues relating to Congress and the legislative process, and he is frequently quoted in the media on these issues. During the Trump administration, he published numerous pieces on congressional oversight, subpoena enforcement, and the impeachment process for Just Security and his own blog, Point of Order. He is currently working on a history of congressional-executive information disputes. He teaches congressional oversight at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management.

Stern is also interested in legislative capacity and government transparency more generally, and he has worked with a number of organizations on these issues. He has served on the ABA Task Force on Federal Lobbying Reform and the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council. He has worked with legislative lawyers from other countries on matters of mutual interest and has given evidence to Parliament regarding the law and practice of congressional oversight in the United States.

Stern is a graduate of Haverford College and the University of Chicago Law School. He clerked for Chief Judge Charles Clark on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Prior to his congressional career, he was a litigator at the law firm of Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge.