As the federal government once again approaches the debt ceiling, partisans are again pulling out the heavy artillery: Don’t bother negotiating with Republicans on taxes and spending, they tell the President, just declare the debt ceiling in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and ignore it. As a matter of law, …
Liberals are touting an analysis by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) that they say “refutes” arguments against the Obama Administration’s legal authority to waive work requirements. But the funny thing is that, as shoddy as CRS’s analysis may be, it refuses to say that the Administration’s plan is lawful. A …
Today, the Supreme Court tossed out the work of a district court that attempted to force its own electoral maps on the state of Texas, while ignoring the maps drawn by the Texas legislature. The unanimous decision is a major victory for constitutional federalism, and a blow to runaway judicial activism. …
Defenders of President Obama’s unprecedented “recess” appointments of Richard Cordray to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three members to the National Labor Relations Board argue that the Constitution is vague on when Congress is in session and that the President can therefore take a “functionalist” approach that considers …
“Are you serious? Are you serious?” then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D–CA) famously replied when asked where, specifically, the Constitution granted Congress the authority to mandate that every American purchase health insurance coverage. The question was very serious, it turns out, even if Pelosi’s intent was sarcasm. Four federal …
Last week, Bloomberg reported that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulatory push against the fossil fuel industry will cost America’s largest utility, the Southern Company, up to $18 billion in compliance costs. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. According to data in a filing by Southern last week, …
For some partisans—especially those who believe in the “living Constitution”—the Constitution sanctions all they favor and forbids all they oppose. So it is with the debate over the debt limit. All of a sudden, politicians who have never cared much for constitutional fidelity are citing a little-known section of the …
Today the Supreme Court took up the case of American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, reviewing a Second Circuit decision finding that states and private parties could sue electricity generators for global warming under the judge-made law of nuisance. To the Second Circuit, this was just a “garden-variety” claim, despite …
