Purchasing Submission : Conditions, Power, and Freedom

Philip Hamburger

ISBN 10: 0674258231 / ISBN 13: 9780674258235

Published by Harvard University Press Sep 2021, 2021

About this Item

Neuware - Government¿s use of largess to secure consent to conditions all too often serves as an illicit pathway of power. This mode of control is part of the contemporary reality of American governance, and it therefore needs to be recognized alongside more familiar sorts of power, such as rule through law and administrative power.

Seller Inventory # 9780674258235

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Purchasing Submission : Conditions, Power, and Freedom
• Publisher: Harvard University Press Sep 2021
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674258231
• ISBN 13: 9780674258235
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 210W x 153H x 30D millimeters 210 millimeters width by 153 millimeters height by 30 millimeters depth
• Weight: 530 grams

About this title

Synopsis

From a leading constitutional scholar, an important study of a powerful mode of government control: the offer of money and other privileges to secure submission to unconstitutional power.

The federal government increasingly regulates by using money and other benefits to induce private parties and states to submit to its conditions. It thereby enjoys a formidable power, which sidesteps a wide range of constitutional and political limits.

Conditions are conventionally understood as a somewhat technical problem of “unconstitutional conditions”―those that threaten constitutional rights―but at stake is something much broader and more interesting. With a growing ability to offer vast sums of money and invaluable privileges such as licenses and reduced sentences, the federal government increasingly regulates by placing conditions on its generosity. In this way, it departs not only from the Constitution’s rights but also from its avenues of binding power, thereby securing submission to conditions that regulate, that defeat state laws, that commandeer and reconfigure state governments, that extort, and even that turn private and state institutions into regulatory agents.

The problem is expansive, including almost the full range of governance. Conditions need to be recognized as a new mode of power―an irregular pathway―by which government induces Americans to submit to a wide range of unconstitutional arrangements.

Purchasing Submission is the first book to recognize this problem. It explores the danger in depth and suggests how it can be redressed with familiar and practicable legal tools.

About the Author

Philip Hamburger is Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and President of the New Civil Liberties Alliance. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the author of Separation of Church and State, Law and Judicial Duty, and Is Administrative Law Unlawful?