In honor of Constitution Day, an “alumnus” of The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI), who now works at the Goldwater Institute, has written a trenchant attack on bureaucratic and presidential power grabs. In “The Constitution Rejects Rule-by-Decree,” Dr. Timothy Minella cites three major examples of illegitimate rule that have affected many Americans.
Contrary to the Founding Fathers intentions that elected representatives make the laws, Dr. Minella makes the following points:
The Environmental Protection Agency has issued regulations that will “severely restrict the sale of new gas-powered vehicles, essentially forcing Americans to purchase electric vehicles.”
Citing the dangers of the COVID pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) declared a nationwide moratorium on evictions in rental housing. The policy drove up rents, and landlords could not evict problem tenants.
The Biden administration has tried to unilaterally cancel student loan debt to American taxpayers without congressional authorization.
These misguided policies, Dr. Minella writes, also flout the Constitution, which “couldn’t be clearer” on the point: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress.” The president “can neither create laws nor ignore laws.” In the New Deal years of the 1930s, “progressives altered this beneficent design by establishing dozens of new agencies … to set wide-ranging policies that affected nearly every aspect of American life.”
The net result of bureaucratic rule and usurpations by the White House have raised the stakes of each presidential race in numerous ways.
Dr. Minella, a former AHI undergraduate fellow who holds a Ph.D. in the history of science from the University of South Carolina, formerly served on the faculty of the University of Kentucky’s Lewis Honors College. He has also taught at Emory University and Villanova University. He has published works on American history, the history of science, and the history of education.
The Goldwater Institute, where he is a Senior Fellow at its Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy, is an Arizona-based public policy and litigation organization that fights throughout the country for constitutional principles. In a major case at the Supreme Court this year, it joined other organizations in filing arguments against lawmaking by executive agencies.
They won at the end of the court’s term in June, when the widely reported Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision overturned the decades-old “Chevron deference” precedent that required judges to accept bureaucrats’ interpretations of legislation.
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