04 August 2025
Taxation Without Representation
What started as a trade war in 2018 – and a domestic policy aimed at recalibrating the U.S. trade policy – has quietly transformed into a tool of hidden taxation, enabling the U.S. executive branch, meaning the President of the United States, to raise revenue and dramatically influence fiscal policy without legislative consent or even minimal participation in the legislative process by Congress. This divergence from legal norms represents a constitutional rupture – what I call the rise of a shadow fiscal state: a parallel tax system designed and executed solely through executive discretion rather than transparency and congressional legislation. Continue reading >>
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28 July 2025
Bullying Universities
David Pozen at Columbia University calls Columbia University’s new agreement with the federal government “regulation by deal”. Of course, Columbia should have learned by now that making a deal does not mean that the pressure stops. Appeasing a bully only empowers the bully – and he will be back for more. Regulation by deal, precisely because it bypasses general lawmaking procedures, leaves open the possibility that any deal can be supplemented with even more demands in the future. It can provide no legal guarantees of security. Continue reading >>
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04 July 2025
The Limits of Limiting Democracy
The intellectual and institutional architectures built around democracy are under pressure – and evolving: Germany reformed its fiscal constitution in March, Europe’s Stability and Growth Pact is undergoing a stress test, and in the United States, the White House is questioning the independence of monetary policy. Historically, democracy has an ambivalent reputation: Plato described it as both the freest and the most unstable of governments. But how far and in what ways can democracy be limited before it loses its democratic nature? Continue reading >>
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