As the world opens back up, emergency powers reform still matters

As the country continues to re-open after more than a year of living under COVID emergency orders, it may be tempting to ignore calls to restrict executive overreach.

But Daniel Dew tells us why we must be vigilant in upholding our system of checks and balances before the next national crisis comes our way.

Governors can protect civil liberties, too

Perhaps the greatest source of tension between governors and state legislatures this past year has been over the proper scope of emergency powers.

Democrat Governors Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania and their Republican counterparts in Ohio, Maryland, and West Virginia, to name just a few, have lashed out at emergency powers reforms aimed at limiting their ability to rule by fiat.

Not so in Montana. Dillon Chepp shows how decisions made this term by Gov. Greg Gianforte serve as useful examples of how a governor can wield this power to respect constitutional rights and individual liberties.

Agency bureaucrats can’t ignore Marbury v. Madison

While history does not repeat itself, it often rhymes. The wait by Professors Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University and John Yoo of the University of California, Berkeley for delivery of their signed commissions to serve on the National Board for Education Sciences seems all too reminiscent of Marbury v. Madison.

President Trump finalized the appointments in December by signing their commissions. Those signed commissions, however, remain with bureaucrats at the U.S. Department of Education.

Without them, the professors cannot serve their appointments. Jessica Thompson explains that withholding the commissions also ignores the legal precedent set in Marbury that presidential appointees have a vested legal right to their commissions, even after a change in White House administrations.

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