Tallulah Costa
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How did you hear about the At-Large Fellows program and what inspired you to apply?
My passion for social justice as a teenager led me to Smith College, where I have explored political science with a critical lens. After watching Vice (2018) and taking a course entitled “The American Presidency” at Smith, I found an academic research niche in Richard Cheney’s vice presidency. I read countless articles on the unitary executive theory, dissected Cheney’s memoir, and studied constitutional law to develop enough knowledge on the vice presidency to propose a senior honors thesis on the subject. My academic goal is to make a meaningful contribution to existing scholarship on the United States’ executive branch. As I wrote and studied more about presidential power, I became familiar with Presidential Studies Quarterly, and thus CSPC. I discovered the Fellowship program and couldn’t wait to apply. Becoming a Presidential Fellow has provided me a unique opportunity to become more of an expert on presidential power while building upon the ongoing research of my thesis.
How do you hope the Fellowship will support your academic or career goals?
Learning from and connecting with the respected scholars at CSPC, and later presenting my research and competing for publication will enhance my academic and professional skills. My life goal has long been to democratize knowledge. My career goals reflect this, as I aspire to complete either a law or library science degree, with the hope of becoming an academic legal librarian or work in a law library or archive at the federal level, and continuing my scholarship on the vice presidency.
Elaborate on your research for the Fellowship.
My research interrogates whether the Vice President has the ability to wield executive action independent of the President through the lens of legal scholarship, Office of Legal Counsel opinions, and case law. In my research, I will also discuss Cheney’s tenure and boundary/norm-pushing as Vice President, and bring in the implications of my research question against the narrow and formalistic interpretation of the unitary executive theory. This research builds upon my honors thesis, which is seeking to define what it means to be an “active” vice president, ranking modern-era vice presidents from most to least active based on the criteria I determine, and selecting case studies from the most and least active to glean what nuances exist from my research might suggest.
If you could have any job, what would it be?
If I could have any job, I would love to work as legal counsel for a sitting vice president. I think it would be fascinating to apply my scholarship and knowledge on the office to real-life legal scenarios, and witness the power (or lack of it) of the vice president in action.