Separation of Powers

The Seventh Amendment protects a common-sense right: When the government accuses you of wrongdoing and comes after your money or your livelihood, the people deciding your guilt or innocence should not be the same people who accused you in the first place. That separation keeps government power in check. Without it, an agency can act as accuser, jud ...

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court announced that it will hear the case of Pacific Legal Foundation client Elliot Goldberg—a financial professional who is challenging the State's authority to impose massive civil penalties without a jury trial. At his core, Elliot Goldberg is a problem solver. His success as an entrepreneur can be attributed in la ...

Earlier this month, President Trump shrank two national monuments in Utah by 90 percent each, about 3 million acres in all. This is just the latest pull in the endless tug-of-war between presidents over public lands. The regulatory whiplash that has become the only reliable pattern in federal land management makes an elegant case for why the federa ...

If you're injured by the negligence of a federal employee—through medical malpractice, a car accident, or some other careless mistake—you generally have the right to sue the United States for compensation. But if you're a member of the Armed Forces, that right disappears. This is all thanks to the Feres doctrine. In 1946, Congress enacted th ...

Ron Fodé never planned to be a farmer. But in 1984, his father suffered a brain aneurysm and could no longer run the family's farm in Grant County, Washington. Ron packed up his life as a student at Washington State University and came home to help. The learning curve was steep. He had to teach himself how to grow potatoes, onions, wheat, and s ...

Eighty years ago, in June 1946, Congress passed the Administrative Procedure Act. It was hailed by one of its principal drafters, Sen. Patrick McCarran, D-Nev., as "a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated" by federal agencies. In the intervening years, the APA has too often failed to ...

For nearly a century, federal law barred the president from firing members of the Federal Trade Commission unless they could be shown to have committed "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." The goal of this congressionally imposed restriction was to give agencies like the FTC some measure of independence from politics. But the ...

This month marks the 811th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta, an event regarded by many as the foundation of the English Constitution and an inspiration for American independence. Magna Carta's lore has taken on a legendary quality over time, but the tale of the rebel barons compelling the tyrant King John to affix his seal to a document ...

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." James Madison wrote these words in The Federalist 47 in 1788 after the Constitutional Convention had deliberately divided the three main powers of government among thr ...