Panel Recap: Localism and Democracy

At the inception of the American Constitution Society, just eight years ago, this panel might well have been viewed as an anomaly. Federalism was the watchword of conservatives struggling to constrain the power of the national government. How times have changed. As Ernie Young noted in his pre-conference blog post, "During the Bush years, progressives trained since the 1960's to disparage state autonomy as indelibly tainted by racism rediscovered the importance of state policy diversity. They defended California's right to go its own way on environmental policy and Massachusetts' prerogatives to allow gay marriage at home and protest human rights violations abroad." The result has been a flourishing progressive federalism movement—or more accurately, as several panelists noted, a federalism without political valence. The four panelists last Saturday spoke to divergent features of today's federalism. What united their presentations was a sense of the dynamism and possibility of the new federalist movement.

Video courtesy of Yale Law School.

 

First to present were Ilya Somin and Ernie Young, who brought opposite perspectives to the question of how diminishing loyalties to particular states have altered the course of federalism. Somin argued that lower barriers to inter-state mobility promote federalism by facilitating "voting with your feet," even as the rise of federal funding reduces states' incentives to attract tax revenues. Young argued, to the contrary, that a resurgence of state loyalties is needed to foster rich cultures of federalist innovation within the states.

The Promise and Peril of Federalism in the 21st Century

Crosspost from Balkinization

American federalism faces both great promise and serious dangers over the next few years. One of the most important advantages of federalism is the ability to “vote with your feet” – to leave a state with oppressive or ineffective policies and move to a better one. Modern technology has greatly reduced the moving costs that previously made interstate migration difficult.  Information about different jurisdictions is easier to get than ever before. Increasing mobility and declining information costs give state and local governments stronger incentives to adopt policies that will be attractive to migrants. Revenue-hungry state governments know that valuable taxpayers will depart if they raise taxes too high or provide poor public services.

Some claim that federalism has lost its value because most Americans no longer feel any strong attachment to state governments. Yet this change may actually make federalism more effective. People who do not feel an attachment to their states are more willing to vote with their feet. This strengthens the incentive of state and local governments to adopt policies appealing enough to keep migrants from leaving. In an increasingly complex and  diverse society, federalism is also potentially more valuable than ever in its traditional role of providing divergent policies for people with differing preferences.

Preserving Democracy’s Laboratories

Crosspost from Balkinization

As Judith Resnik’s contribution to the “Constitution in 2020” volume makes clear, American federalism has neither a progressive nor a conservative political valence. In Wisconsin’s beautiful statehouse in Madison, one can almost sense the ghost of Robert LaFollette and other early Progressives, who initiated reforms in the states before taking them national. Nor should we forget Henry Adams’s observation that, prior to the Civil War, “there was no necessary connection” between “the slave power and states’ rights. . . . Slavery in fact required centralization in order to maintain and protect itself.” During the Bush years, progressives trained since the 1960’s to disparage state autonomy as indelibly tainted by racism rediscovered the importance of state policy diversity. They defended California’s right to go its own way on environmental policy and Massachusetts’ prerogatives to allow gay marriage at home and protest human rights violations abroad.  After 2008, progressives will be tempted to shift back to reliance on national power.  But what has once turned can turn again, and 2016 might well bring back the “bad old days” in Washington, D.C.

Point-Counterpoint: Progressive Approaches to Achieving Marriage Equality?

Over the next few days, Daniel Winik and Jeremy Kessler will use this space to delve into one of the most pressing debates within contemporary constitutionalism: whether progressive advocates for marriage equality should focus their energies on legislatures or the courts. Consider it a lawyerly debate, with each writer arguing wholeheartedly for the merits of his client — Dan for an “incremental,” legislatively-focused strategy, Jeremy for a court-centered approach — rather than either trying to give a completely “rounded” view on his own. Like many questions, the answer probably rests somewhere in the balance.

Point: Daniel Winik

I’ll open with an argument for incrementalism, an argument shaped in large part by several pieces from The Constitution in 2020, especially Judith Resnik’s discussion of progressive federalism (Chapter 24, PDF) and Robin West’s analysis of “legisprudence” (Chapter 8, PDF). As the essays by Resnik and West suggest, any effective progressive agenda will have to move beyond single-minded reliance on the federal courts as guarantors of rights. This is particularly true, as I see it, for marriage equality: progressives should continue to favor a state-by-state approach to achieving marriage equality, and where possible, they should make their case in the legislatures rather than the courts. Both of these elements — federalism and legislation — are central to an incremental approach. (For similar thinking, see Aaron Zelinsky’s insightful posts here and here.)

Without a doubt, incrementalism makes concessions to the federal bench’s conservative tilt and to the ongoing debate — even among progressives — as to whether the Federal Constitution encompasses marriage equality. That said, my argument is not mainly a tactical one. Even if the Supreme Court were to uphold an Equal Protection challenge, that outcome might not be best for progressives in the long run. Let me suggest three reasons why.

A New Use for Federalism? The Benefits and Constitutionality of Randomness in Federal Policymaking

Determining whether progressives should pursue change through the legislatures or the courts depends on our understanding both of what each of these institutions should do and of what these institutions are capable of doing... and they might be more versatile than we've come to assume. As Adam Chandler explains, social science methods point to some interesting uses Congress could make of federalism.

 

Where laws and regulations differ across state borders, researchers are provided with natural tests of the impacts of those policies. For instance, folks with statistical training can use geographical panel data techniques to discover the effect of a law that is enacted in multiples states at staggered times. Such studies have been done on the deterrent impact of capital punishment and the impact of right-to-carry laws on crime rates to give just two examples. These analyses, however, are necessarily retrospective and constrained by inference techniques. Extensive and careful effort must be used to control for, among other variables, the underlying reasons some states enacted the laws and others did not. More often than not, the resulting answer is that there is not enough evidence to draw a conclusion.

Consider, in contrast, a federal law designed to apply only to randomly selected states (or congressional districts, etc.). Controlled randomized experiments are often described as a “gold standard” in social science research. Adapted from clinical trials, they attempt to isolate the effects of some intervention — say, a new sex ed program — from the environment’s chaotic soup of natural influences and trends. That’s done by comparing a randomly constituted “experimental” group’s experience under the intervention to the natural, everyday changes that a second randomly constituted group experiences when left alone (this second group is the “control” group). These comparisons can help us measure the causal link between a policy and an outcome. And where do the groups come from? I suggest we randomly assign geographical regions, like states, into one or the other.

Perhaps the law could grant twenty random states the funding for a new sexual education curriculum. Then some years later, we could determine the new curriculum’s impact on teen pregnancy rates by comparing the twenty “experimental” states’ teen pregnancy rates to the rates in the thirty “control” states. In this way, such a law could provide one of the first nationwide experimental tests of a policy’s effectiveness. That is, perhaps our country’s federalist structure could allow us to use the states as policy laboratories. Could this be a new use for federalism?