On December 13, 2011, a bipartisan group of legal experts told a panel of lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives that the federal criminal code had grown so large that U.S. citizens could not possibly keep up with it. “We ought to get rid of the old myth that you’re presumed to know the law,” Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) said. About 4,500 criminal statutes exist, according to Ed Meese, a former U.S. Attorney General under President Reagan. “This is in addition to over 300,000 other regulations that don’t appear in the federal code but nevertheless carry essentially criminal penalties including prison,” he said. “So the vast array of traps for the unwary that lurks out there in federal criminal law is more extensive than most people realize.” The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts figures some 80,000 defendants are sentenced in federal court each year.
Back in the 1990s, Sandra Day O’Connor, then a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, said at a small gathering, “Congress is acting like a state legislature.” She went on to point to all the crimes being federalized. I asked her why the Rehnquist Court had not applied the brakes to this breach of federalism. “Because it takes five,” she replied. In other words, not even the Rehnquist conservative majority, which had been responsible for the Morrison and Lopez rulings, was sufficient to arrest the ongoing political consolidation via the federalizing of criminal law.
In late 2011, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s panel on crime, introduced a bill that would reduce the federal criminal code by a third and define the level of criminal intent that is necessary to break the law. Laying aside the matter of Congress over-criminalizing society at the expense of liberty, and the related matter of the “micro-managing” mentality that is implied in a ceaseless desire to “mold” or control others by threatening penalties, federalism itself ought to be brought to bear on Sensenbrenner’s proposal.
Specifically, in addition to reducing the quantity of federal criminal statutes and regulations to that which the citizenry can reasonably be expected to digest, each statute and regulation should be either retained or thrown out on the basis of whether it falls within one of the enumerated powers of Congress. By “falls within,” I do not mean indirectly or by extension, as in the specious argument that an Iowa farmer’s home-grown wheat used solely by the farmer (and his family) is subject to the reach of the interstate commerce clause because if enough farmers grew wheat for their own consumption, the price of wheat transported between states would be impacted. The term expressly need not be used in the U.S. Constitution for it to be understood that the enumerated powers do not distend through sheer reasoning to preempt those powers reserved to the American republics or their residual powers. Wheat that never leaves Iowa cannot, by definition, be considered to be part of interstate commerce. I suspect that the same logic is being broken in Congressional efforts to federalize criminal law.
The U.S. Constitution clearly states that the police power resides with the states. Considering the abuses associated by state officials in implementing (or abusing) that power (e.g., California police pepper-spraying students to manipulate them off the sidewalk on a public university campus), the U.S. Government could shift from undercutting federalism by “federalizing” criminal law outside the enumerated powers to strengthening federalism by acting on a check against abusive state officials. In other words, federal criminal law could be primarily directed to the states (i.e., their officers), and to citizens secondarily and only within the powers enumerated for Congress. This approach is consistent with the confederal element that is retained in the broader notion of modern federalism (e.g., as applied in the U.S. and E.U.), while acknowledging that the general government also reaches to the citizenry directly (“direct effect”).
One example of the federal government attempting to check a systematic abuse of power by police in a state’s county is the three-year investigation by the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice of the Maricopa County sheriff’s office in Arizona. The ensuing report found “a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos” reaching Sheriff Joe Arpaio himself. Deputies are said to “target Latino drivers on the roadways and detain innocent Latinos in the community in their searches for illegal immigrants,” according to the New York Times. Such practices, according to the report, are in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable seizures. The report adds that Latinos have been systematically mistreated in the county jail. Besides the report, a separate federal grand jury investigation was underway as well, focusing on accusations of abuse of power by the sheriff department’s public corruption squad.
For its part, the Justice Department was urging the sheriff to cooperate with the federal government in turning his department around, or risk a lawsuit and the loss of millions of dollars in federal money. Even so, Arpaio “brushed off the criticism in a news conference as politically motivated,” according to the New York Times. He was particularly upset that the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, a former Arizona governor, had announced that the federal government would no longer allow the sheriff’s deputies to check the immigration status of inmates in their custody. In reaction, the sheriff remarked, “This is a sad day for America as a whole.”
Besides the inherent impoussance of the Justice Department’s plan “to do cultural change” in a sheriff department that is headed by intransigence, the sheer time during which the alleged abuses had been allowed to continue (e.g., the report taking three years) bespeaks a woefully inadequate priority in the federal government to act as a real check on the states. To be sure, Arizona is a sovereign state with regard to its police power, and the federal government is obliged to respect that sovereignty. However, neither a government of a state nor of the union is free to violate the U.S. Constitution, which is the source of all of the governmental sovereignty that is in the federal system (characterized by dual sovereignty—split between two systems of government, that of the states and that of the union). So Arisona is not free to violate the Fourth Amendment, and the general government can legitimately provide a check, as judged by the judiciary. Therefore, rather than usurping state criminal law by federalizing criminal statues, Congress should go to work to give the federal government better tools with which to act as a check on sheriffs such as Arpaio. Generally speaking, there is more than enough for the Congress to do within its federal role without encroaching on federalism itself paradoxically by “federalizing” powers assigned to the several states. The latter activity involves an opportunity cost that I dare say the Latinos in Maricopa County doubtless do not appreciate.
Back in the 1990s, Sandra Day O’Connor, then a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, said at a small gathering, “Congress is acting like a state legislature.” She went on to point to all the crimes being federalized. I asked her why the Rehnquist Court had not applied the brakes to this breach of federalism. “Because it takes five,” she replied. In other words, not even the Rehnquist conservative majority, which had been responsible for the Morrison and Lopez rulings, was sufficient to arrest the ongoing political consolidation via the federalizing of criminal law.
In late 2011, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s panel on crime, introduced a bill that would reduce the federal criminal code by a third and define the level of criminal intent that is necessary to break the law. Laying aside the matter of Congress over-criminalizing society at the expense of liberty, and the related matter of the “micro-managing” mentality that is implied in a ceaseless desire to “mold” or control others by threatening penalties, federalism itself ought to be brought to bear on Sensenbrenner’s proposal.
Specifically, in addition to reducing the quantity of federal criminal statutes and regulations to that which the citizenry can reasonably be expected to digest, each statute and regulation should be either retained or thrown out on the basis of whether it falls within one of the enumerated powers of Congress. By “falls within,” I do not mean indirectly or by extension, as in the specious argument that an Iowa farmer’s home-grown wheat used solely by the farmer (and his family) is subject to the reach of the interstate commerce clause because if enough farmers grew wheat for their own consumption, the price of wheat transported between states would be impacted. The term expressly need not be used in the U.S. Constitution for it to be understood that the enumerated powers do not distend through sheer reasoning to preempt those powers reserved to the American republics or their residual powers. Wheat that never leaves Iowa cannot, by definition, be considered to be part of interstate commerce. I suspect that the same logic is being broken in Congressional efforts to federalize criminal law.
The U.S. Constitution clearly states that the police power resides with the states. Considering the abuses associated by state officials in implementing (or abusing) that power (e.g., California police pepper-spraying students to manipulate them off the sidewalk on a public university campus), the U.S. Government could shift from undercutting federalism by “federalizing” criminal law outside the enumerated powers to strengthening federalism by acting on a check against abusive state officials. In other words, federal criminal law could be primarily directed to the states (i.e., their officers), and to citizens secondarily and only within the powers enumerated for Congress. This approach is consistent with the confederal element that is retained in the broader notion of modern federalism (e.g., as applied in the U.S. and E.U.), while acknowledging that the general government also reaches to the citizenry directly (“direct effect”).
One example of the federal government attempting to check a systematic abuse of power by police in a state’s county is the three-year investigation by the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice of the Maricopa County sheriff’s office in Arizona. The ensuing report found “a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos” reaching Sheriff Joe Arpaio himself. Deputies are said to “target Latino drivers on the roadways and detain innocent Latinos in the community in their searches for illegal immigrants,” according to the New York Times. Such practices, according to the report, are in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable seizures. The report adds that Latinos have been systematically mistreated in the county jail. Besides the report, a separate federal grand jury investigation was underway as well, focusing on accusations of abuse of power by the sheriff department’s public corruption squad.
For its part, the Justice Department was urging the sheriff to cooperate with the federal government in turning his department around, or risk a lawsuit and the loss of millions of dollars in federal money. Even so, Arpaio “brushed off the criticism in a news conference as politically motivated,” according to the New York Times. He was particularly upset that the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, a former Arizona governor, had announced that the federal government would no longer allow the sheriff’s deputies to check the immigration status of inmates in their custody. In reaction, the sheriff remarked, “This is a sad day for America as a whole.”
Besides the inherent impoussance of the Justice Department’s plan “to do cultural change” in a sheriff department that is headed by intransigence, the sheer time during which the alleged abuses had been allowed to continue (e.g., the report taking three years) bespeaks a woefully inadequate priority in the federal government to act as a real check on the states. To be sure, Arizona is a sovereign state with regard to its police power, and the federal government is obliged to respect that sovereignty. However, neither a government of a state nor of the union is free to violate the U.S. Constitution, which is the source of all of the governmental sovereignty that is in the federal system (characterized by dual sovereignty—split between two systems of government, that of the states and that of the union). So Arisona is not free to violate the Fourth Amendment, and the general government can legitimately provide a check, as judged by the judiciary. Therefore, rather than usurping state criminal law by federalizing criminal statues, Congress should go to work to give the federal government better tools with which to act as a check on sheriffs such as Arpaio. Generally speaking, there is more than enough for the Congress to do within its federal role without encroaching on federalism itself paradoxically by “federalizing” powers assigned to the several states. The latter activity involves an opportunity cost that I dare say the Latinos in Maricopa County doubtless do not appreciate.
Sources:
Gary Fields and John Emshwiller, “Criminal Code Is Overgrown, Legal Experts Tell Panel, Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2011.
Marc Lacey, “U.S. Says Arizona Sheriff Shows Pervasive Bias Against Latinos,” The New York Times, December 16, 2011.
