When I was in grade school, I learned that America was a republic. There were checks and balances built into the political machinery of the country, our teachers taught us, and things like the Electoral College and indirect election of senators (now defunct) to insulate the body politic against the will of the fickle masses.
Over the past year and a half, we have seen some of the largest divides in US state policy in recent history. Certain states such as California have implemented heavy lockdowns, mask mandates, curfews, and other restrictions for months on end, whereas states such as South Dakota never had an official lockdown to begin with.
The conflict over covid vaccines is coming to a climax. The Biden administration released its vaccine mandate. Enterprises with more than one hundred employees will be required to demonstrate that all employees either are fully vaccinated or both wear masks and are tested on a weekly basis. Texas has already challenged the constitutional basis for the mandate and the initial federal court ruling has blocked the mandate. The final court outcome of this case is uncertain.
An income tax audit is essentially a search. Why, consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, doesn’t it require a search warrant signed by a judge?
Since income-tax audits sometimes lead to criminal prosecutions and jail sentences, why is it not a requirement that anyone whom the IRS wishes to audit first be given a Miranda warning, with its notification of the right to remain silent and to have an attorney present?
Over the past decade federal military and intelligence agencies have increasingly embraced so-called woke campaigns and policy positions. Specifically, these government agencies have taken explicitly ideological positions in promoting “pride month” and more recruitment of larger numbers of gay and transgender personnel explicitly for purposes of increasing “diversity.” Actual military concerns appear to be receding into the background even as the US military establishment has recently lost yet another war and blown trillions of taxpayer dollars.
In The Broken Constitution, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021) Noah Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School, argues that Abraham Lincoln criticized consent theories of government which allow the legitimacy of secession and defended in their stead majoritarian democracy. In this week’s column, I’d like to look at Lincoln’s argument against these theories.
Feldman says that the
