Last week Racket News published Matt Taibbi’s column “Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Blunt Call for Government By ‘Independent’ Experts” (“Independent from what? Dumb voters, of course. On this week’s potentially transformative Supreme Court case, and the revival of Woodrow Wilson’s vision”).
In his own way Taibbi takes up a subject we’ve written a lot about on Power Line over the years. Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship Dean Ronald Pestritto’s outstanding study of Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism pried my eyes open, but I really saw the light with Columbia Law School Professor Philip Hamburger’s Is Administrative Law Unlawful. I wrote up Professor Hamburger’s book for National Review in the review “A new old regime.”
Professor Hamburger is a scholar with an activist streak. After writing the book, he founded the New Civil Liberties Alliance. In passing Taibbi mentions the NCLU’s Margot Cleveland. Her column on the case drew Taibbi’s attention to the issue of the administrative state. The column is “7 Reasons SCOTUS Needs to Declare Humphrey’s Executor All Dead.”
The administrative state is fundamentally incompatible with the United States Constitution. That’s what we’re talking about, but that’s not what KBJ is talking about. Coincidentally, the Claremont Review of Books has just published editor Charles Kesler’s speech celebrating the CRB’s 25th anniversary in its present incarnation. What is to be done? Professor Kesler alludes to the problem posed by the administrative state toward the end of his remarks:
Trump has no model for constitutionalizing the modern state, or restoring common sense to politics and civil society. Americans know how to found and operate a Constitution and a government based on it. Or at least we used to. But we don’t have a lot of experience reforming or dismantling an unconstitutional, and in some respects even anti-constitutional, government. Given the difficulty and urgency of this task, Trump has made many, and will make more, mistakes.
Professor Kesler has given his anniversary remarks the evocative title “One Score and Five.” Taibbi’s column remains behind the Racket News paywall. However, Racket News has now posted the audio version below.
