Our friend James Copland of the Manhattan Institute has a new book out The Unelected: How an Unaccountable Elite is Governing America
The Founders’ constitutional design, Copland reminds us, “was predicated on accountability to the voting public.” This was essential to ensure the “consent of the governed.” Since the Constitutional Convention was held in 1787, and particularly in the wake of the New Deal, we have significantly departed from this ideal. Government has greatly expanded in size and power, and—more importantly—“governmental accountability to the public has been substantially eroded.” In Copland’s telling, the unelected, unaccountable entities exercising control over the polity consist of four components: rulemakers, enforcers, litigators, and what he calls the “new antifederalists.” ...
Unlike some public law scholars, Copland (who is Director of Legal Policy at MI) does not overlook the role of our legal system in the transformation of our self-governing republic into a caste-like society ruled by an unaccountable clerisy. Copland criticizes “litigators” as an elite group of unelected actors, on par with the administrative state. Defenders of litigation sometimes try to justify it as a form of “private enforcement,” akin to the free market, but Copland correctly notes that our litigation system is far removed from markets: “Markets involve consensual transactions, in which each party to the transaction agrees to a deal. A lawsuit, in contrast, entails one party taking from another, unwilling party, who is engaged with the plaintiff only because the government forces the issue.” ...
Copland’s engaging critique is thorough and thoughtful enough to satisfy policy wonks, but is also laced with interesting vignettes about actual Americans whose lives have been affected by the unaccountable elites. We read about the travails of Bobby Unser, John Rapanos, USC football star Matt Boermeester, and other Americans whose lives were disrupted—and in some cases ruined—by unaccountable elites. These real-life stories may broaden the appeal of The Unelected, and make its message resonate with a popular audience in a way that a purely scholarly tome could not. Toggling back and forth between The Federalist Papers and yesterday’s headlines, Copland brings the concepts to life, energizing them further with pop culture references and allusions to movies and television shows not often seen in legal books.
I am looking forward to reading my copy, which is teed up on Kindle.
