Bill of Rights explained 4: The rise of the administrative state

[Music] [Applause] welcome Liberty lovers friends of individual rights and fans and limited government Pacific Legal Foundation attorney and member of the real Justice League Tim snowball here with another great video on an important subject that any supporter of the Constitution is gonna be interested in I am talking about the greatest single threat to individual liberty Franklin Delano Roosevelt just kidding but he was terrible so what is the greatest threat to Liberty this video was about the administrative stage now one of the primary ways that Thomas Jefferson justified the split from Great Britain in the Declaration of Independence was King George the Third's empowerment of bureaucrats to her I saw people in need out their substance if Jefferson were still alive he would probably be working with us a specific legal foundation now you probably remember this from 7th grade social sciences class Congress is vested with the power to make the laws the president is vested with the power to enforce the laws and the Supreme Court is vested with the power to decide the constitutionality of the laws this essential principle is known as the separation of powers and for many of the founding fathers is one of the most important protections built into the Constitution and for roughly the first 150 years of the American Republic this carefully crafted system operated mostly as intended but for FDR and the other new dealers the founders views and the purpose of government was hopelessly outdated rather than a guarantee of the liberty of each individual the Constitution's carefully crafted system of checks and balances designed to require broad consensus and impede rash lawmaking were seen as an impediment to progress and instead of the Constitution being binding law based upon fixed and unchanging principles the progressives goal was to transform the Constitution into a flexible living document that could be adapted to their own political preferences because the most accomplished learned political philosophers of the eighteenth century didn't really know that much about politics for the progressives the natural rights theories of the founders were incompatible impediments to the government driven progress they wish to achieve at any cost according to the progressive historian Carl Becker to ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false is essentially a meaningless question in 1920 Charles Merriam he of dictionary fame Roth of the idea that men possess inherent and inalienable rights of a political or quasi political character which are independent of the state has generally been given up finally John Dewey the progressive father of modern educational theory once wrote that liberalism is committed to the idea of historic relativity it knows the content of the individual and freedom change with time thus the natural rice-based political science of the founders in which government exists to secure the natural rights of the people was traded for rights as the gift of arbitrary and unlimited government our founding documents became nothing more than aged parchment comprising mere suggestions nothing more than historical curiosities the way legal theorist Randy Barnett puts it we went from rights come first government comes second to government comes first and then rights come from the government because the country was founded on the idea that people in positions of power know best and are always to be trusted right and how did the progressives propose to fix the Constitution by centralizing power in a new authority what has become known as the administrative state this unelected fourth branch of government would not be constrained by either the Constitution or the people the idea was to avoid getting bogged down in all these outdated notions of democracy in the rule of law whatever that is never mind that slowing things down and gaining consensus was the entire point progressives fought to bypass this carefully crafted and hard-won framework instead empowering unelected experts because experts have never let anyone Australia bureaucrats are empowered to enact enforce and rule on policies imposed directly on the American people after FDR added some poorly drafted legislation and one or two badly decided decisions by the Supreme Court and you have the behemoth that is the modern administrative state may be an example of how a typical administrative agency functions based on the work of constitute scholar Gary Lawson will be useful here's how the separation of powers works in the amount of administrative state the Commission promulgates substantive rules of conduct the Commission then considers whether to authorize investigations into whether the Commission's rules have been violated if the Commission authorizes an investigation the investigation is conducted by the Commission which reports its findings to the Commission if the Commission thinks that the Commission's findings weren't an enforcement action the Commission issues the complaints the Commission's complained that a commission rule has been violated is then prosecuted by the Commission and adjudicated by the Commission this Commission adjudication can either take place before the full commission or before a semi-autonomous commission administrative law judge if the Commission chooses to adjudicate before an administrative law judge rather than the full Commission and the decision is adverse loo Commission the Commission can appeal to the Commission if the Commission ultimately finds a violation then and only then the affected private party can appeal to a bona fide article 3 court but the agency decision even before an actual court possesses a very strong presumption of correctness on both matters of fact and of law and besides this blatantly unconstitutional mix of powers there's also the sheer size of the administrative state to consider there are now so many administrative agencies controlling the food we eat the water we drink the cars we drive the products we purchase and nearly every aspect of American life we aren't even sure how many agencies actually exist the original purpose of many federal regulatory agencies was probably well intentioned such as ensuring safe food drugs or working conditions I say probably because I'm reminded of Thomas sole saying that the welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses it's about the egos of the elites evidently Kanye likes this quote too I'm reminded of a quote by a great American named Tim snowball the road to hell is paved with government interventions but regardless of the need for such regulations the merit of any particular program they still must be developed implemented and enforced in a constitutional manner the size scope and power the modern administrative state has far surpassed even the worst imaginings of the founding fathers an explosion of government power unprecedented in modern history resulting in individual rights violations and the rule of law replaced by the rule of bureaucrats now given everything that's happened some of you may be wondering whether there's any hope of enacting meaningful change well I'm here to tell you that there is since 1973 Pacific Legal Foundation has become one of the most active and successful Public Interest legal organizations in the United States every day we stand opposed to every government attempt to violate the separation of powers contained in the Constitution and protections guaranteed in the Bill of Rights in total Pacific Legal Foundation has argued eleven cases before the United States Supreme Court four in the last 10 years alone and that's an impressive number for any legal organization but it's even more impressive given that we have achieved victories on behalf of our clients and the rest of the country in nine out of those 11 cases and this number does not even begin to scratch the surface of the many many victories we have achieved at all levels of state and federal courts across the country this year we also launched our Center for the separation of powers which will lead in the development and promotion of solutions to end the administrative state this year we also did something unprecedented not just for ourselves but also for the wider legal community we filed two multi-state initiatives specifically aimed squarely at reining in the power of the administrative state and we are just getting started haiya Liberty lovers I'm here outside the real Justice League headquarters I want to thank you so much for watching the video I really appreciate it if you liked it if you hated it there's anything you'd like to see in the future please leave us a comment below for now keep fighting

Channel: Pacific Legal Foundation

Views: 8,839

Keywords: FDR, deep state, adminstrative state, bureaucracy, scotus, supreme court, franklin delano roosevelt

Id: 6N6cD-_0OWo

Length: 8min 22sec (502 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 25 2019