Maxwell School News and Commentary

James E. Baker, director of the Institute for Security Policy and Law talked to the New York Times regarding the federal governments, authority over the security of our medical supply chain, amid urging by State and local authorities.

"The Insurrection Act may be invoked only following an invasion, insurrection or widespread domestic violence," says William C. Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs. "Only if states attempt to leave the Union would state defiance enable Insurrection Act authority. Otherwise the states control their citizens' health, welfare and safety."

"If martial law were invoked, the government would be conducted ad hoc by the president or a military commander based entirely on his or her opinion of what was needed to meet the emergency, unbound by any laws and with no transparency or public participation, and probably no accountability afterward," writes William C. Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs. 

"If there is a gap between voluntary production and what is needed, or anticipated to be needed, the DPA [Defense Production Act] is the mechanism to close that gap," says the Hon. James E. Baker, director of the Institute for Security Policy and Law.

"In the last two weeks, there are moments when he [President Trump] has sounded more ‘presidential’ than I have ever heard him," says Grant Reeher, professor of political science and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. "At the same time, he will revert to the old Trump. It’s hard to make sense of those things."

By once again deploying its crisis tool kit, Fed officials indicated that the pandemic could drive the global economy into a more severe shock than anything seen in more than a decade, says Associate Professor of Political Science Daniel McDowell and his co-authors.

Elizabeth Cohen, professor of political science, provides the full scope of the immigration bias against individuals belonging to marginalized groups, starting in the days just after 9/11, and examines how the panic of the time gave way to the creation of a complex and unmonitored infrastructure that the Trump administration has unleashed without recourse.

"We borrowed a lot of money to give tax cuts to big corporations and rich people in not the most effective way," says Leonard Burman, Paul Volcker Chair in Behavioral Economics. "The real concern is the growing debt and the possibility that interest rates won’t stay low forever—and I don’t think they will." 

"For those who believe in the rule of law and the importance of constitutional norms, his impeachment is nonetheless important because it upholds and reinforces the importance of those norms," says Professor Emeritus William Banks.