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The Collective-Action Constitution

The Collective-Action Constitution

Author: Neil S. Siegel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780197760963
Published In: August 2024
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Description
Contents

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The United States Constitution was established primarily because of the widely recognized failures of its predecessor, the Articles of Confederation, to adequately address "collective-action problems" facing the states. These problems included funding the national government, regulating foreign and interstate commerce, and defending the nation from attack. Meeting such challenges required the states to cooperate or coordinate their behavior, but they often struggled to do so both inside and outside the Confederation Congress. By empowering Congress to solve collective-action problems, and by creating a national executive and judiciary to enforce federal law, the Constitution promised a substantially more effective federal government.

An important read for scholars, lawyers, judges, and students alike, Neil Siegel's The Collective-Action Constitution addresses how the U.S. Constitution is, in a fundamental sense, the Collective-Action Constitution. Any faithful account of what the Constitution is for and how it should be interpreted must include the primary structural purpose of empowering the federal government to solve collective-action problems for the states and preventing them from causing such problems. This book offers a thorough examination of the collective-action principles animating the structure of the Constitution and how they should be applied to meet many of the most daunting challenges facing American society today.

Introduction

Part I: Thinking Constitutionally, and Collectively

1. Foundations: McCulloch

2. The New “Science of Politics”

Part II: A Collective-Action Theory of the Federal Structure-and Its Limits

3. The Roles of the States and the Interstate Compacts Clause

4. The Necessity of Federal Power: Taxing, Spending, and Borrowing

5. Interstate Commerce, Foreign Commerce, and Related Principles

6. National Security, Positive Externalities, and National Uniformity

7. Executive Energy, Judicial Authority, and Federal Supremacy

8. Races to the Bottom, Interstate Coordination, and Territorial Empire

9. Constitutional Rights, Collective Action, and Individual Action