Liberty's Nemesis

The Unchecked Expansion of the State

Dean Reuter, John Yoo

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781594038372
• eBook ISBN:
  9781594038389
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

If there has been a unifying theme of Barack Obama’s presidency, it is the inexorable growth of the administrative state. Its expansion has followed a pattern: First, expand federal powers beyond their constitutional limits. Second, delegate those powers to agencies and away from elected politicians in Congress. Third, insulate civil servants from politics and accountability. Since its introduction in American life by Woodrow Wilson in the 20th Century, the administrative state’s has steadily undermined democratic self-government, reduced the sphere of individual liberty, and burdened the free market and economic growth.In Liberty’s Nemesis, Dean Reuter and John Yoo collect the brightest political minds in the country to expose this explosive, unchecked growth of power in government agencies ranging from health care to climate change, financial markets to immigration, and more. Many Americans have rightly shared the Founders’ fear of excessive lawmaking, but Liberty’s Nemesis is the first book to explain why the concentration of power in administrative agencies in particular is the greatest – and most overlooked – threat to our liberties today.If we fail to curb it, our constitutional republic might easily devolve into something akin to the statist governments of Europe. President Obama’s ongoing efforts to encourage just such a devolution, and the problems his administration faces as a consequence, present a critical opportunity to defend the original vision of the Constitution.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. The Ad Hoc Implementation and Enforcement of Health Care Reform
• 2. A Multifaceted Assault on the Second Amendment
• 3. Religious Liberty
• 4. Is Chevron’s Game Worth the Candle? Burning Interpretation at Both Ends
• 5. Immigration: Executive versus Congressional Action
• 6. Operation Choke Point and the Bureaucratic Abuses of Unaccountable Power
• 7. Cheating Marriage
• 8. The Fannie/Freddie Fiasco: Executive Overreach in the Regulation of Financial Markets
• 9. Executive Interference with a Supposedly Independent Agency: The Federal Communications Commission
• 10. Promoting Small Business Capital Formation: The Promise of Venture Exchanges
• 11. Executive Overreach: Dodd-Frank
• 12. Threats to Due Process and Free Speech on Campus
• 13. Congress in an Era of Executive Overreach
• 14. A Stylized Model of Agency Structure for Mitigating Executive Branch Overreach
• 15. The Radicalization of the National Labor Relations Board
• 16. Disparate Impact: The Way of the New World
• 17. Muddied Waters: How the EPA and Corps of Engineers Redefined Their Authority over State Waters
• 18. The Separation of Powers in an Administrative State
• 19. Scandal at the IRS
• 20. Federal Overreach in Environmental Regulation: “A Severe Blow to the Constitution’s Separation of Powers”
• 21. Criminal Law and the Administrative State: How the Proliferation of Regulatory Offenses Undermines the Moral Authority of Our Criminal Laws
• 22. FTC Overreach on Advertising Enforcement Threatens the Free Flow of Valuable Information
• 23. Preemption without Representation
• 24. Unilateral Actions of President Obama in Voting and Elections
• 25. The Designation of Systemically Important Financial Institutions by the Financial Stability Oversight Council and the Financial Stability Board
• 26. The FTC, Unfair Methods of Competition, and Abuse of Prosecutorial Discretion
• Conclusion
• Author Biographies
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index