The policies articulated in District Attorney Bragg’s Day One memo have prompted considerable public discourse about their merits and demerits. I, for one, believe that if they are taken at face value and enforced, they would endanger public safety. But regardless of the extent to which reasonable minds may agree or disagree on his stated policies, District Attorney Bragg has overstepped his role and failed to meet obligations under the New York Constitution.

As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his famous dissent in Morrison v. Olson: “It is the proud boast of our democracy that we have a government of laws and not of men.” As he went on to observe, the ability to make this boast depends on a fundamental feature of our democracy: the principle of separation of powers. District Attorney Bragg’s Day One memo contradicts that core principle in numerous respects. I will focus on three of his directives.

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