Many of the critical day-to-day governance decisions — from zoning to civil rights enforcement to worker protections, financial regulations, and consumer rights — take place within the administrative state. Without a greater degree of democratic responsiveness and accountability within the administrative process, these substantive rights are unlikely to be vindicated or equitably enforced. This means that policymakers and administrative law scholars alike need to start approaching the task of administrative institutional design with a greater attention to power disparities.

This is the final post of a three-part series. Read Part I and Part II Part Three: The Substantive Constitution Reconstruction, Freedom, and Nullification: The Battles over the Fourteenth Amendment In 1872, newly-emancipated and enfranchised black Republicans won a wave of elections throughout the country, including in Grant Parish, Louisiana. The election was disputed and…

This is the second post of a three-part series. Read Part I and Part III. Part Two: The Structural Constitution The Basic Structure Suggested readings: One of the central functions of the Constitution is to structure the core institutions of government. In our constitutional system, this means the allocation of power between federal and state…

A primer on constitutional law from the perspective of political economy.

Twenty-first century democracy demands structural limits on techno-power that render private data monopolies amenable to democratic control.

As questions of economic inequality have taken center stage in American politics, there has been a growing interest among public law scholars in questions of power, institutional design, inequality, and political economy. Scholars like Zephyr Teachout, Larry Lessig, Yasmin Dawood, and others have used concepts like domination and corruption to diagnose problems of oligarchy, inequality,…