October 25, 2019
In September, the war against stronger vehicle emission standards got real. We went from two and a half years of escalating rhetoric between the Trump administration and California to dramatic federal action with potentially profound consequences. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (“NHTSA”) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) jointly issued new rules to…
April 11, 2019
“[E]very generation or so a case comes along when this Court needs to say enough is enough,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in 2012, “if the Equal Protection Clause is to retain any force in this context.” The context he was referring to was the extreme discretion given to state and local governments to vary the…
March 18, 2019
Gone are the days of absolute sovereign immunity. The king can now (sometimes) do wrong. Governments today consent to liability and can have their immunity abrogated by superior powers. The Federal Tort Claims Act is an example of the former, while Title VII suits against states illustrate the latter. Because local governments are not sovereign,…
January 17, 2019
American politics features two political parties that cannot agree on much of anything. On the biggest and the smallest of issues, what candidates and officials from the parties do and what they say increasingly diverge. But there is an exception: left and right, coastal or flyover, first-time candidate or long-time incumbent, almost all candidates for…
January 8, 2019
The lines between national politics and state or local politics, always blurred and squiggled, continue to evaporate. Just look at the recent “blue wave” midterm elections, in which a fierce backlash to Donald Trump carried hundreds of Democrats into state and local offices. In Texas, for example, the wave transformed courts across the state and…
October 17, 2018
“After the 2016 election,” a recent video about the New York Senate primary begins, “New York State acted fast to pass these measures to resist Trump’s agenda: universal, single-payer healthcare; fully funded public schools; strong environmental safeguards; and sanctuary state legislation to protect all immigrants. Just kidding! That didn’t happen.” But, narrator Edie Falco continues,…
October 12, 2018
In November, voters will be asked to decide 6000 state legislative elections, with 87 of the nation’s 99 state legislative houses holding their regularly scheduled elections. But, on the day after Election Day, all of these elections will be understood by the mass media as having asked essentially only one question: Did voters support Donald…
April 30, 2018
What if Donald Trump pardons people identified as targets by Robert Mueller before, during, or after they are prosecuted in federal court? Would those people escape accountability for their acts, or would a state—particularly New York State, which has jurisdiction over Trump Tower and several key players—be able to prosecute them for what is defined…
