Title: De Tocqueville or Disney? the Rehnquist Court's Idea of Federalism
Abstract: Steven G. Calabresi succinctly identified three elements of Rehnquist Court's revision of constitutional federalism. The contemporary Supreme Court is willing for first time since 1937 to police boundary lines of congressionally enumerated powers over regulation of commerce and enforcement of Fourteenth Amendment.... [T]he Court ... erected a firm Tenth Amendment barrier to congressional efforts to commandeer state legislatures and executive entities ... [and] expanded doctrine of sovereign immunity so that it imposes a very high barrier to congressional efforts to expose states to private lawsuits either in federal or in state court. (1) While there is consensus on what Rehnquist Court has done, there are many ideas on reasons behind this renewed attention to federalism. Professor John O. McGinnis sees Rehnquist Court's jurisprudence as a comprehensive and coherent effort to invigorate[] decentralization and private ordering of social norms that Alexis de Tocqueville celebrated in Democracy in America as being essence of social order generated by our original Constitution. (2) While old Warren Court's mission was and perfecting democracy, particularly at national (3) Rehnquist Court is endeavoring to empower states and local governments to foster citizen engagement in politics and to curtail deleterious influence of special interests. (4) McGinnis and Rehnquist Court see Framers' federalism as a way of reinforcing social norms that arise from society by limiting actions of national government. For McGinnis, such an effort currently is required due to extent to which special interests have come to dominate national domestic politics because a distracted public has become content to entertain itself with television and accept symbolic gestures from politicians as a substitute for public policy. (5) This sorry state of affairs is a product of over-centralized mass democracy. (6) McGinnis musters evidence from [m]odern political science that seems to demonstrate that mass national democracy often produces legislation that neither reflects majority will nor is efficient, since special interests dominate legislators while most are rationally ignorant of salient political issues. (7) The damage done to polity by over-centralization can be partially undone by empowering private civic organizations and state and local government. According to de Tocqueville, McGinnis and Rehnquist Court, civic organizations are an antidote to mischief of faction. According to this formula, civil associations organize to meet common goals of their members, unlike political factions, which try to use government coercion for their own ends. (8) These associations have influence at local level, making local government more responsive and contributory to a more public-spirited citizenry. (9) Moreover, American federal system creates a marketplace in which local governments and state governments exist in competition with each other, which should drive them to deliver their public goods in most efficient way. In this 'laboratory of democracy,' successful experiments of yesterday become effective public policy of tomorrow. (10) How GOLDEN IS THE PAST? If McGinnis is correct in his assessment of Rehnquist Court's objectives, then Court's solution to twin problems of a disengaged citizenry and an unresponsive, faction-dominated government is a return to early eighteenth century America as chronicled by Alexis de Tocqueville. De Tocqueville noted that a centralized state may contain subjects, [but] it has no citizens because the source of public virtue is dried up. (11) In United States of 1830s, however, the interests of country are everywhere kept in view, and each citizen boasts of its success, to which he conceives to have contributed; and he rejoices in general prosperity by which he profits. …
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-03-22
Language: en
Type: article
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