Americans have a love-hate relationship with government. Rejecting bureaucracy—but not the goods and services the welfare state provides—Americans have demanded that government be made to run like a business. Hence today’s privatization revolution. But as Jon D. Michaels shows, separating the state from its public servants, practices, and institutions does violence to our Constitution, and threatens the health and stability of the Republic. Constitutional Coup puts forward a legal theory that explains the modern welfare state as a worthy successor to the framers’ three-branch government. What legitimates the welfare state is its recommitment to a rivalrous system of separation of powers, in which political agency heads, career civil servants, and the public writ large reprise and restage the same battles long fought among Congress, the president, and the courts. Privatization now proclaims itself as another worthy successor, this time to an administrative state that Americans have grown weary of. Yet it is a constitutional usurper. Privatization dismantles those commitments to separating and checking state power by sidelining rivalrous civil servants and public participants. Constitutional Coup cements the constitutionality of the administrative state, recognizing civil servants and public participants as necessary—rather than disposable—components. Casting privatization as an existential constitutional threat, it underscores how the fusion of politics and profits commercializes government—and consolidates state power in ways both the framers and administrative lawyers endeavored to disaggregate. It urges—and sketches the outlines of—a twenty-first-century bureaucratic renaissance.
For readers of How Democracies Die, two legal scholars expose the history of the GOP's hidden political strategy to rollback protected rights, from abortion and gun control to surveillance and LGBTQ rights. Virginia's governor sets up a tip line for parents to snitch on teachers who acknowledge the reality of racial inequality. Texas unleashes bounty hunters against individuals who aid or abet anyone seeking an abortion. Florida encourages drivers to run over Black Lives Matter protesters who gather peacefully. And everywhere, there is the persistent threat of political violence. While these episodes might seem to be isolated spasms of MAGA rage, they reflect a concerted legal and political strategy that has been quietly unfolding in courts, think tanks, and state legislatures since the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. With painstaking and enlightening research, Vigilante Nation exposes the insidious network of right-wing lawyers, politicians, funders, and preachers who are deploying vigilantism to cement their hold on power and impose a theocratic version of America. For so long, we have been taught by a bipartisan consensus that vigilantism is incompatible with our rule of law, but our history shows that the right has used it to enforce their vision of true social order. From the Fugitive Slave Act's use of bounty hunters to Southern militias violently enforcing the terror of Jim Crow, America has long been the home of political vigilantism. Now, discover what the future holds and how crucial it is that we each understand our country's vigilante laws"--
Americans hate bureaucracy—though they love the services it provides—and demand that government run like a business. Hence today’s privatization revolution. Jon Michaels shows how the fusion of politics and profits commercializes government and consolidates state power in ways the Constitution’s framers endeavored to disaggregate.
Americans have a love-hate relationship with government. Rejecting bureaucracy--but not the goods and services the welfare state provides--Americans have demanded that government be made to run like a business. Hence today's privatization revolution. But as Jon D. Michaels shows, separating the state from its public servants, practices, and institutions does violence to our Constitution, and threatens the health and stability of the Republic. Constitutional Coup puts forward a legal theory that explains the modern welfare state as a worthy successor to the framers' three-branch government. What legitimates the welfare state is its recommitment to a rivalrous system of separation of powers, in which political agency heads, career civil servants, and the public writ large reprise and restage the same battles long fought among Congress, the president, and the courts. Privatization now proclaims itself as another worthy successor, this time to an administrative state that Americans have grown weary of. Yet it is a constitutional usurper. Privatization dismantles those commitments to separating and checking state power by sidelining rivalrous civil servants and public participants. Constitutional Coup cements the constitutionality of the administrative state, recognizing civil servants and public participants as necessary--rather than disposable--components. Casting privatization as an existential constitutional threat, it underscores how the fusion of politics and profits commercializes government--and consolidates state power in ways both the framers and administrative lawyers endeavored to disaggregate. It urges--and sketches the outlines of--a twenty-first-century bureaucratic renaissance.--
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