Some Emergency Powers Need Congress’s OK by George W. Liebmann Regarding the suggestion by David B. Rivkin ‘Jr. and Charles Stimson in “A Constitutional Guide to Emergency Powers” (op-ed, March 20) that • “widespread noncompliance with federal quarantines and travel bans promulgated under the Public Health Service Act may qualify as an insurrection.” […]
The Unintended Consequences of Mainstreaming By George W. Liebmann Anyone assessing the very appropriate questions posed by the organizers of this symposium should focus on an underappreciated piece of federal legislation: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, passed during the first Bush administration. While the disabilities act for adults was a humane measure […]
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Robert Bork: Judicial Activist Twins
The American Conservative, September 9, 2019 by George Liebmann It is fashionable for Americans and Europeans alike to think of Donald Trump as an aberration—a fluke thrown up by the obtuseness of an insulated ruling class for sponsoring an unattractive candidate like Hillary Clinton. Many believe that once the lessons of Trump are absorbed […]
Richard J. Evans, Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History (London and Boston: Little, Brown, 2019, 785pp. by George W. Liebmann This is a massive biography of a economic historian whose popular fame rests on his having been made one of 65 Companions of Honour by the Queen while remaining a member of the Communist Party […]
The Filibuster, According to Robert Taft by George W. Liebmann Public congressional approval ratings have rarely been above 20% since 2012 and currently stand at 15.3%. This is a result of the manifest inability of the Senate to enact significant legislation by reason of the three-fifths cloture rule. Speaking of filibusters in 1946, the then […]
Epidemics of Ideas By George Liebmann The greatest of American judges, Learned Hand, warned of Americans’ susceptibility to epidemics of ideas. His concerns about media concentration led him to impose public utility standards on the Associated Press in a famous antitrust case in recognition of the non-economic interests at stake. Judge Robert Bork and his […]
The Secular Case for Abortion Restrictions by George W. Liebmann The 45 years that have elapsed since Roe v. Wade have seen no diminution of the abortion controversy. Laurence Tribe, Roe’s only academic defender at the time of its rendition has assured us that it is “a clash of absolutes.” The absolutes are Justice Kennedy’s […]
A Tale of Two Commissions by George Liebmann Those amazed by the parlous state of today’s Democratic Party can find its roots in the fate of two national commission reports of twenty years ago. National commission reports are not usually brought by the stork. These bodies are usually created by Presidents for their own purposes. […]
The “Five Policemen” Revisited by George W. Liebmann “THE PRESIDENT then turned to the third organization which he termed “The Four Policemen,” namely the Soviet Union, United States, Great Britain and China. This organization would have the power to deal immediately with any threat to the peace and any sudden emergency which requires this action. […]