All Posts Tagged With: "federalism"

Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century

How can Americans restrain an out-of-control federal government that won’t recognize any constitutional limits on its power? In Nullification: How to Resist Tyranny in the 21st Century, Thomas Woods argues that state invalidation of federal laws could be the answer. First, though, Woods identifies what almost certainly won’t work: trying to effect change by sending [...]

21Sep2011 | Jacob H. Huebert | 26 comments | Continued

Federalism Means Carte Blanche for States?

Federalism is an important concept in the political structure of the United States—or at least it is supposed to be. Under the Constitution the national (or as it is now almost invariably called, federal) government was given certain responsibilities. Beyond those limited functions the federal government was not to go. The Tenth Amendment makes the [...]

1Jul2010 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued

States’ Rights and the Union Imperium in Imperio, 1776–1876

Historian Forrest McDonald has produced this fine survey of how the idea of divided sovereignty has played out in American history. “Imperium in Imperio” means “sovereignty within sovereignty, the division of sovereignty within a single jurisdiction.” They said it could not be done — that sovereignty could not be divided. In 1789, however, the Americans [...]

30Jun2010 | James Ostrowski | 0 comments | Continued

A Contemptible Congress and a Derelict Court

What can Congress do that the Supreme Court would find unconstitutional? Or, what can Congress do that a president would veto as unconstitutional? It is not much exaggeration to say that Congress can do whatever it can muster a majority vote for, whether it is constitutional or not. The members only have to worry about [...]

24Feb2010 | Walter E. Williams | 5 comments | Continued

Lee’s Legion of Lessons

The state is a harsh taskmaster with a taste for eating its own. A man may devote much of his life to its violence only to find himself on the receiving end one day. The Bible warns that “all those who take up the sword perish by the sword.” Yet distressing numbers of folks try [...]

1Sep2007 | Becky Akers | 1 comment | Continued

Dos and Don’ts of Tort Reform

Five years ago a Florida jury somehow conjured up punitive damages of $145 billion for a class of tobacco plaintiffs. Two years later a California jury recommended a $28 billion treasure trove for a single claimant. And in 1998 four major cigarette companies agreed to the grandmother of all awards—a quarter-trillion-dollar settlement to reimburse the [...]

1May2005 | Robert A. Levy | 1 comment | Continued

Parting Company Is an Option

My last essay in The Freeman, “How Did We Get Here?” (March), provided clear evidence that Congress and the White House, as well as the courts, had vastly exceeded powers delegated to them by our Constitution. To have an appreciation for the magnitude of the usurpation, one need only read Federalist 45, where James Madison, [...]

1Jun2004 | Walter E. Williams | 1 comment | Continued

Law and Property: The Best Hope for Liberty?

There is little left of the conventional protections for individualism in the modern world. Whatever theoretical virtues there may be in democracy (and there aren’t many1), in practice it has disintegrated into a struggle among self-regarding interest groups, mediated by government, over wealth that is exclusively created by private individuals.

1Jul2003 | Norman Barry | 1 comment | Continued

What’s So Good About Democracy?

It was once said that “democracy is the most promiscuous word in the language; she is everybody’s mistress.” Indeed, political regimes of widely differing institutional features label themselves democracies, as did totalitarian communist orders. Often, the best guide to a country’s democratic credentials was that it didn’t call itself democratic: compare West Germany’s Federal Republic with the East German Democratic Republic.

1May2003 | Norman Barry | 35 comments | Continued

What Protects Consumers and Workers?

Baltimore Sun political writer H. L. Mencken once warned, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” As saviors, politicians then announce an array of government programs to safeguard a [...]

1Jul2002 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | Continued

A New Old American Concept of Political Liberty

It is odd that a libertarian should have a conception of political liberty at all. Isn’t it the case that there is a permanent war between freedom and politics? Surely any reduction in the political sphere produces a concomitant increase in individual liberty. Has not choice in the market, characterized by personal autonomy and spontaneity, [...]

1Mar2002 | Norman Barry | 0 comments | Continued

The Economic Virtues of Federalism

Dan Alban is a recent graduate of Berry College and a fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies. Frank Stephenson is an assistant professor of economics in the college’s Campbell School of Business and an adjunct scholar with the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. The political benefits of federalism as a mechanism for dispersing and restraining [...]

1Nov2000 | and and Daniel L. Alban | 0 comments | Continued

Constitutional Protection of Economic Liberty

Norman Barry, a contributing editor of Ideas on Liberty, is professor of social and political theory at the University of Buckingham in the UK. He is the author of An Introduction to Modern Political Theory (St. Martin’s Press). The Supreme Court has been deliberately neglectful of traditional American economic liberties. With the exception of some [...]

1Nov2000 | Norman Barry | 0 comments | Continued

Real Federalism: Why It Matters, How It Could Happen

“Federalism’s history has been the history of its demise.” So writes Michael S. Greve in a book designed nevertheless to prove that, like Mark Twain’s demise, the death of federalism has been greatly exaggerated. Federalism has been down for decades, floored by the pro-New Deal shift of the Supreme Court in 1937 and kicked repeatedly [...]

1Jul2000 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued

First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas

The nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court produced two confirmation “debates.” The first, of interest primarily to lawyers and other Supreme Court watchers, included occasionally fascinating exchanges about natural law, its role in constitutional interpretation, and contemporary constitutional issues. The second was the sorry spectacle of tawdriness that arose from the leaking of [...]

1May2000 | Joerg W. Knipprath | 1 comment | Continued

The Great Bequest

Tom Palmer is director of the Project for a Civil Society at the Cato Institute. This article is adapted from the Cato Handbook for Congress. Limited government is one of the greatest accomplishments of humanity. It is imperfectly enjoyed by only a portion of the human race, and, where it is enjoyed, its tenure is [...]

1Mar1999 | Tom G. Palmer | 1 comment | Continued

There’s No Philadelphia in Europe

The late Norman Barry was professor of social and political theory at the University of Buckingham in the United Kingdom and was the author of Business Ethics (Macmillan, 1998). The member states of the European Union, in their struggles to find some form of international authority, are going through debates that have a strange resonance [...]

1Feb1999 | Norman Barry | 1 comment | Continued
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