Ronald J Pestritto

The America of the modern administrative state is not the America of the original Constitution. This transformation comes not only from the ordinary course of historical change and development, but also from a radical, new philosophy of government that was imported into the American political tradition by the Progressives of the late nineteenth century. The new thinking about the principles of governmentand open hostility to the American Constitutionled to a host of concrete changes in American political institutions. Our government today reflects these original Progressive innovations, even if they are often unrecognized as such because they have become ingrained in American political culture. This book shows the nature of these changes, both in principles and in the nuts and bolts of governing. It also shows how progressivism was often at the root of critical developments subsequent to the Progressive Era in more recent American political historyhow it was different than the New Deal, the liberalism of the 1960s, and todays liberalism, but also how these subsequent developments could not have transpired without the ground laid by the original Progressives.

The irreducibly constitutional nature of the Civil War's prelude and legacy is the focus of this absorbing collection of nine essays by a diversity of political theorists and historians. The contributors examine key constitutional developments leading up to the war, the crucial role of Abraham Lincoln's statesmanship, and how the constitutional aspects of the war and Reconstruction endured in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This thoughtful, informative volume covers a wide range of topics: from George Washington's conception of the Union and his fears for its future to Martin Van Buren's state-centered, anti-secessionist federalism; from Lincoln's approach to citizenship for African Americans to Woodrow Wilson's attempt to appropriate Lincoln for the goals of Progressivism. Each essay zeroes in on the constitutional causes or consequences of the war and emphasizes how constitutional principles shape political activity. Accordingly, important figures, disputes, and judicial decisions are placed within the broader context of the constitutional system to explain how ideas and institutions, independently and in dialogue with the courts, have oriented political action and shaped events over time.

Following the Roosevelt administration's implementation of New Deal programs in the 1930s, the federal courts began to interpret the Constitution in a way that accommodated the rise of the "administrative state," and bureaucratic policymaking continues to persist as a central feature of American government today. This essay submits, however, that the three pillars supporting the administrative state-the congressional delegation of Article I powers to the executive branch, the combination of powers within individual administrative entities, and the insulation of administrators from political control-might be reconsidered by the courts in the near future. After showing that the constitutionality of the administrative state has come under recent judicial scrutiny, the essay turns to the administrative law principle of deference, and argues that a reassessment of the Chevron doctrine seems imminent. Finally, the essay examines federal courts' heavy use of "hard look" review as a means of curtailing agency discretion during recent administrations, and concludes that this judicial practice stands in uneasy tension with republican principles.

"The America of the modern administrative state is not the America of the original Constitution. This transformation comes not only from the ordinary course of historical change and development, but also from a radical, new philosophy of government that was imported into the American political tradition by the Progressives of the late nineteenth century. The new thinking about the principles of government - and open hostility to the American Constitution - led to a host of concrete changes that Progressives proposed, and on occasion consummated, for American political institutions. Government today reflects these original Progressive innovations, even if they are often unrecognized as such because they have become ingrained for so long in American political culture. This book shows the nature of these changes - both in principles and in the nuts and bolts of governing; it also shows how progressivism was at least at the root of critical developments subsequent to the Progressive Era in recent American political history - how it was different than the New Deal, the liberalism of the 1960s, and today's liberalism, but also how these subsequent developments could not have transpired without the ground laid by the original Progressives"--

In many respects the Barack Obama presidency has become a unifying force for both conservatives and liberals. Conservatives seem united in looking aghast at what they consider to be the radical and comprehensive remaking of American national government—a remaking that seems to reject not only the American constitutional order, but to exceed even the ambitions of the New Deal and Great Society in its extension of governmental authority into the private sphere. Yet the developments since 2009 have been in the making for the better part of the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries, as the Constitution appears to have

Among the many contributions of Herman Belz, perhaps the most meaningful from the perspective of a political theorist is Belz’s artful weaving of history and ideas in his many great works. Belz is among the very best historians of the United States, and he has achieved this accomplishment without suffocating the great, transcendent ideas of the American regime with the methodological assumptions of historicism. He has enlightened those of us in political science with the critical context of American history that we are prone to forget, yet has done so in a way that enhances our ability to talk about