January 1787, America’s top diplomat, John Jay, asked George Washington, its leading citizen, “Shall we have a King?” Neither Jay nor Washington were optimistic about the fate of the American republic under the Articles of Confederation, given its decentralized structure and feeble powers. After winning the war for independence against Great Britain, the United States appeared incapable of governing themselves as one …
Continue readingWASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump isn’t just changing the presidency during his first term in office. He’s also changing Congress. More than perhaps any president in modern history, Trump has been willing to ignore, defy and toy with the legislative branch, asserting power and breaking norms in ways his predecessors would hardly dare. Republicans shrug it off as Trump being …
Continue readingGive the Republican Party control of the White House and Congress, and it’s only a matter of time before Democrats discover the virtues of devolving authority to state and local governments.
Continue readingI would call the attention of every American—not just every politician, not just every judge, but every single citizen—to the first word of the first sentence of the first paragraph of the first article of the Constitution: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in the Congress.”
Continue readingThe Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to overturn a precedent that strengthens the power of government regulators in a closely watched case that could have broad ramifications for federal agencies. The precedent is known as “Auer deference,” after the 1997 case Auer v. Robbins. Since Auer, the Supreme Court has held that courts should defer to agencies’ interpretations of their …
Continue readingTexas and Massachusetts are very different states. For starters, one of them could fit inside the other 25 times (not that we’re counting). Ideologically, Massachusetts residents have tended to support much higher levels of government control, leading the state to enact an ObamaCare-style system years before ObamaCare was forced on states like Texas by the federal government.
Continue readingNot all unintended consequences are bad. One consequence of the election of President Donald Trump is that blue states and progressives find themselves keenly interested in the age-old debate about federalism. But as one writer noted for Vox.com in 2016, “it doesn’t have to be your father’s (or grandfather’s) federalism.”
Continue readingAdministrative law is an arcane subject, but determining when and how courts review agency decision-making tremendously affects Americans’ day-to-day lives and freedoms. A ruling issued last week by the U.S. Supreme Court strikes a blow for individual liberty and gives citizens new safeguards against administrative agency abuse. In Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the court ruled unanimously …
Continue readingFor the past 60 years or so, the Republican Party has declared itself the true party of decentralized government, the founding vision of federalism and what are sometimes called states’ rights. Whether its pious declarations were ever actually about more than securing Southern votes or limiting the rights of women and minorities has always been questionable, but at least in …
Continue readingConnecticut has joined a coalition of states in filing a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions challenging efforts to put unlawful and unconstitutional immigration-related conditions on federal law enforcement grants, Attorney General George Jepsen and Governor Dannel P. Malloy said today. In the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the …
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