Imagine that the federal government prohibits you from exercising a constitutional right. Your neighbor challenges the prohibition and wins; a federal court holds that the government may not enforce it. Now imagine that you want to engage in the very same conduct as your neighbor, inside the same judicial district where the government’s prohibition was...
Federal preemption should protect the choices Congress made, not expand federal regulation beyond the law Congress has passed. In an age when a diverse and complex consumer market shapes Americans’ daily lives, federal courts have increasingly limited states’ ability to balance their citizens’ interests under their own laws. When a preemption clause is unclear, courts...
Across the country, many cities have settled on the same fix for housing shortages: order developers to include affordable units in every new project, or charge a fee if they don’t. Boston does it. So does San Francisco, Chicago, and Denver. The pitch is that affordability comes free, paid for by the market-rate units next...
It doesn’t seem like a very big change. But it is. Today, Kansans will be asked to abolish their Supreme Court Nominating Commission, a committee that ensures unelected lawyers determine who will sit on the highest court of Kansas. Kansas is not alone in creating this body. Leaders across this country are nominating judges who...
John Mark Slack wanted to restore his historic San Marcos home for livability. But San Marcos’ Historic Preservation Commission demanded that in order to get a Certificate of Appropriateness—its stamp of approval—he must replace the roof, siding and doors; broaden the front porch, and add skirting to their specifications. But commissioners didn’t stop there. In...
The American Bar Association (ABA) has long held a stranglehold on accrediting U.S. law schools. In Texas, the ABA gets to decide which schools’ students can take the bar exam, a prerequisite to practicing law. Entrusting a private, out-of-state organization with control over Texas legal education is problematic for three reasons: the ABA pushes politically biased standards,...
Roscoe Filburn owned a wheat farm in rural Montgomery County, Ohio. When he used his own farm to feed his own family, he fell under the hammer of the federal government. It was 1938, and America was in the throes of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Agricultural commodity prices—and specifically, wheat prices—fluctuated wildly,...