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The separation of powers constitutes a vital feature of western democracies, enshrined in myriad federal and state constitutions. Yet, as a broad principle, theorists struggle to pin down its precise nature, and many contend that the tripartite separation of state powers into legislative, executive and judicial branches proves simplistic and infeasible. I argue we should understand the separation of powers as a strategy used to structure relations between the separated institutions. This process of structuring empowers the creation of novel inter-relations among institutions (relations of balancing, checking, dividing, coordinating and so on), with the goal of improving their institutional integrity. In short, we separate only to reconnect.

This chapter generally concerns how elements of liberal democratic constitutional discourse have functioned to normalize emergency and possible state of exception governance during the COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, the chapter focuses on the transference of legislative power to the executive under conditions of emergency rule and how it is possible for delegated emergency lawmaking to operate beyond the limits of what is constitutionally permissible; thus, triggering a state of exception. The chapter uses the deployment emergency rule during the pandemic in The Bahamas as a case study to show how ambivalence and legal uncertainty were the two principal drivers of the normalization process produced by elements of constitutional discourse, and then further explains how constitutionalism, generally, and in its dysfunctional application, can reinforce the processes normalizing emergency and possible state of exception governance.

This chapter examines the influence of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy on some of the most important Supreme Court decisions of the past three decades. Mobilizing the epistemic community framework, it demonstrates how network members, acting as amici curiae, litigators, academics, and judges worked to transmit intellectual capital to Supreme Court decision makers in 12 federalism and separation of powers cases decided between 1983 and 2001. It finds that Federalist Society members were most successful in diffusing ideas into Supreme Court opinions in cases where doctrinal distance was greatest; that is, cases where the Supreme Court moved the farthest from its established constitutional framework.

Corruption is a fundamental concern for all political regimes, but particularly for republics where power is vested primarily in a legislative body. While political thinkers across times and places have grappled with this perennial problem, this chapter focuses on the modern American republic and its founders. The authors begin with a brief historical sketch that illustrates the continuity and evolution of corruption discourse, spanning the distance between ancient political philosophy and modern political science. Turning to the American founding, and focusing particularly on the debates at the Constitutional Convention and the essays of The Federalist, the authors show how the framers of the US Constitution engaged with this tradition as they confronted the threat of corruption head on. Although these early American documents provide an ambiguous definition of corruption, the authors endeavor to parse the separate but intertwined meanings of corruption: constitutional, institutional, and moral. While the framers' system draws upon both ancient and modern approaches, their final position is that correct institutional design can provide the solution to political corruption. Ultimately for the framers, this comes down to the design of the legislature and its relationship to the other branches. The authors suggest that while contemporary readers may find much to be dissatisfied with in the framers' proposed solutions, their subtle and wide-ranging conceptualization of the problem of corruption might usefully inform contemporary theory building in this area.

We present empirical evidence on the productive efficiency of electric utilities in the United States from 1990 to 2004. This period is marked by major attempts to introduce deregulation with an expectation that it will lead to improved operating efficiency and ultimately to lower consumer prices. However, relying on improved techniques of estimating productive efficiency, we find that firms in jurisdictions that adopted deregulation have in fact lower productive efficiency, and have also experienced decreases in efficiency over time. In particular, the vertical separation of generation, a hallmark of an effort to deregulate the industry, is associated with an adverse impact on productive efficiency.

This article posits that a more rigorous enforcement of the Constitutional Doctrine of Non-delegation would prevent many of the problems that have been identified with benefit–cost analysis. In particular, a rigorous application would prevent administrative agencies from using benefit–cost analysis as a screen to make policy decisions that the agency otherwise wishes to occur. Though the US Courts might have some difficulty in enforcing this notion, it is possible to do, and would greatly help the benefit–cost process, by regulating it to its proper place in an administrative system.