Search Results for: administrative state
July 3, 2023 — John Hinderaker
As I have written more than once, the government we live under is not the one described in the Constitution. The ubiquitous and powerful arm of our government, found nowhere in the Constitution, is the Fourth Branch, the plethora of federal agencies, the administrative state. The administrative state has assumed much of the power that the Constitution assigns to the legislative and executive branches, a development that has progressed now
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March 8, 2023 — Steven Hayward
John Marini was one of the first conservative thinkers in 2016 to recognize that Donald Trump posed an existential threat to the administrative state, in a series of articles that are included in a recent collection we highly recommend, Unmasking the Administrative State: The Crisis of American Politics in the Twenty-First Century. In this second half of our conversation (take in the first part here if you missed it), Glenn
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February 28, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The “administrative state” is an obscure and ungainly phrase, but in recent years the term has burst out into general use, though it is often conflated with another term currently popular—the “deep state.” They are not the same thing, though they do overlap, and “deep state” does enjoy the advantage of being shorter and pithier. What is “the administrative state”? It is a mistake to confuse it with mere bureaucracy,
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February 8, 2023 — Steven Hayward
John Marini, writing with great prescience back in the 1980s in The Politics of Budget Control about how to think about the federal budget (mainly, not in terms of the money itself): In America the administrative state traces its origins to the Progressive movement. Progressive leaders were hostile to the Constitution because it presupposed a limitation on the power of government. The executive budget system was among the most important
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January 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward
We have noted here several times the way in which executive agencies in the administrative state obliterate the separation of powers by the convenience of having their own “administrative law judges” to adjudicate disputes over an agency rule or action. Turns out Tocqueville was also on to this problem in 1840, where he saw the trends in Europe and cautioned that they might follow eventually in the United States: The
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February 15, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
I haven’t written much about the Department of Labor since Alex Acosta resigned as Secretary of Labor. However, in this post, written after Gene Scalia became the new Secretary, I complained that the DOL was still pursuing its specious “pay discrimination” case against Oracle. The culprit is the Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). During the Obama administration, OFCCP became a bastion of leftism. It pursued radical theories
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December 25, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that might well have major implications for administrative law. The case is Kisor v. Wilkie, in which a Marine seeks retroactive benefits for his PTSD. Why is this case so important? Because, as David French explains, it turns on the deference, if any, the VA’s interpretation of the word “relevant” in the applicable federal regulations should receive. French explains
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January 8, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Steve Bannon’s days as an influential player may be over. If so, what is his legacy? It’s not the election of President Trump. This was down to Trump himself, as the president likes to remind us. Nor is Bannon’s legacy hanging tough on “Billy Bush weekend,” though at times this seems to be what he is most proud of. And his legacy is not blowing a safe Senate seat in
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November 27, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Today may go down in history as one of the crucial turning points in the reversal of the Administrative State. The Supreme Court is hearing Oil States Energy v. Greene’s Energy, where the issue of whether administrative law judges beholden to executive agencies, rather than bona fide Article III judges and juries at trial, can decide whether or not patent property rights deserve protection. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has a
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November 21, 2017 — Scott Johnson
As it wound up its 2017 National Lawyers Convention this past Saturday, the Federalist Society convened an all-star panel to discuss administrative agencies and the separation of powers. Newly minted Eleventh Circuit Judge Kevin Newsom served as the panel’s moderator. The panel of law professors included Boston University’s Gary Lawson, the author of a classic article on administrative law, and Columbia University’s Philip Hamburger, author of (in my estimation) the
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November 20, 2017 — Scott Johnson
The Federalist Society held its 2017 National Lawyers Convention this past Thursday through Saturday. The topic of this year’s convention was Administrative Agencies and the Regulatory State. Most of the proceedings were streamed online and uploaded to YouTube. Senator Cotton gave the opening remarks. Attorney General Sessions formally addressed the convention. The heart of the convention consisted of panel discussions offering an intellectual feast on the threat of the administrative
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November 19, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Last month I noted here and in the Los Angeles Times that the Trump Administration is conducting the most serious effort at de-regulation and true regulatory reform (as opposed to mere temporary relief) since the Reagan Administration, and in some ways superior to the Reagan efforts. (Though to be fair, many of the worst excesses of executive branch regulation have grown up since the Reagan years.) Yesterday my regulatory rabbi
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August 6, 2017 — Scott Johnson
In this sixth and final episode of the RealClearPolitics podcasts on the administrative state, Anthony Mills Tony talks with the Claremont Institute’s John Marini about the origins of the administrative state and the current political scene. A professor of political science at the University of Nevada-Reno, Professor Marini argues that centralized bureaucracy has displaced the Founding Fathers’ vision of a constitutional republic. Their discussion touches on political philosophy, the decline
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August 1, 2017 — John Hinderaker
Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, an Obama holdover, recently authored one of the most pernicious columns within memory in the New York Times. Her column was titled, “Protect the Justice Department From President Trump.” Yates argued, in essence, that there exists an Executive Branch that is independent of, and superior to, the President–at least as long as that Executive Branch is staffed pretty much exclusively by Democrats. This is,
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March 1, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The administrative state is the #1 threat to our freedom, a fact which no one knows better than our friend Howard Root. Howard was the founder and CEO of Vascular Solutions, Inc., a successful medical products company that was set up as a victim by Barack Obama’s hyper-politicized Department of Justice. For five years, Obama’s DOJ persecuted and harassed Howard and his company with bogus claims. Thankfully, Howard Root had
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February 27, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The administrative state is the #1 threat to our freedom, a fact which no one knows better than our friend Howard Root. Howard was the founder and CEO of Vascular Solutions, Inc., a successful medical products company that was set up as a victim by Barack Obama’s hyper-politicized Department of Justice. For five years, Obama’s DOJ persecuted and harassed Howard and his company with bogus claims. Thankfully, Howard Root had
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February 27, 2017 — Scott Johnson
For the 20-plus years my friend Bruce Sanborn served as chairman of the Claremont Institute, we attended the annual meeting of the America Political Science Association over Labor Day weekend. At the APSA convention we attended the panels sponsored by the Claremont Institute. It was our idea of a good time. In those panels we heard a lot about “the administrative state,” frequently from Professor John Marini. Professor Marini had
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