This chapter provides a rough summary of how the United States came to be a federation of states rather than a unitary nation. To that end, it offers a thumbnail sketch of the timeline from the British colonial period to adoption of the US Constitution. The debates at the constitutional convention and the advocacy in both the Federalist and Antifederalist Papers are highlighted, with particular emphasis on the role of state sovereignty and the menu of choices that were open to the framers.

This is the first of two chapters that relate the myriad ways in which state government has impeded true democracy in the United States. In this chapter, the focus is on those counter-majoritarian distortions that are hardwired into the Constitution. These structural barriers to majority rule include equal representation of small states and large states in the US Senate; the Electoral College; the constitutional provision under which a majority of state delegations to the US House of Representatives choose the president when there is no Electoral College majority; and the processes for appointing federal judges and amending the Constitution.

The danger to democratic norms aside, this chapter demonstrates that state government is also a needless source of additional regulation, additional taxation, and inefficient duplication of functions – in short, a waste of taxpayer money and a pointless burden on the citizenry. Yet, many of the specific functions currently performed by state governments are essential. The abolition of state government would therefore require the redistribution of those necessary functions between the national government and the local governments. This chapter demonstrates that such a redistribution would be administratively workable. To show this, it formulates general criteria for deciding which functions should go where and offers illustrations of how those criteria might be applied to specific functions in practice.

This chapter discusses the many counter-majoritarian actions of state legislatures and state executive branch officials and elaborates the profound impact of those actions on the functioning of US democracy. These include gerrymandering, nine common voter suppression strategies, and various other less-publicized manipulations of the electoral process. Too often, it will be seen, state governments have purposely targeted African American and other minority voters, threatening to undo decades of social progress.

Abolishing states would not be the end of the matter; the country’s leaders would have to make a number of fundamental secondary decisions. Someone would ultimately have to decide which of the essential functions currently performed by state government should be nationalized, which ones should be localized, and, as to the latter, how the various local functions are to be further distributed among the many different species of local governments – municipalities, counties, townships, special purpose districts, and unincorporated areas. Who should select the decision-maker? Decisions would also be needed as to the processes and responsibilities for replacing the states’ current roles in national elections, in supplying the bulk of the country’s judges, and in the constitutional amendment process. This chapter considers the options for filling those voids. In the process, it offers a portrait of what a unitary American republic might look like without state government.

This introductory chapter articulates the main thesis and summarizes the arguments that support it. It lays out the reasons that the thesis is important, describes what the book adds to the existing literature, explains some critical terms and concepts, and adds necessary disclaimers.

Unlike the preceding chapters, which focus on the democratic and fiscal costs of state government, Chapter 5 addresses the offsetting direct benefits that states and/or federalism have been claimed to bring. The two most popular such defenses tend to be the diffusion of government power and the ability of states to tailor laws and policies to the demands of their respective populations, but there are several others as well. The discussion here evaluates those defenses. It concludes that, despite their facial appeal, the various defenses turn out to be either very minor or, while significant, replicable at least as well by the national government in some cases and local governments or inter-government partnerships in others.

As other chapters of this book illustrate, forced migration is a worldwide phenomenon. It is played out in source countries, receiving countries, and third countries in all the inhabited regions of the planet. The differing policies of the major receiving countries reflect a mixture of historical, cultural, political, ethnic, linguistic, economic and other variables that are not always easy to identify. Like the other chapters of this book, this chapter on the USA's experience will consider the implications of one jurisdiction's refugee and asylum practices for the principle of the rule of law.

Part one provides core background information on US refugee and asylum law and policy. It summarizes the history of the US refugee protection system, the current legislative framework, the asylum adjudication structure, the basic substantive criteria for refugee or asylum status, and related domestic and international mechanisms for providing humanitarian protection in the USA.

Part two, the heart of the chapter, explores the compatibility of US refugee and asylum practices with the principle of the rule of law. After an introductory explanation of the way in which the term rule of law is being used here, that section will examine five settings in which US refugee and asylum practices raise significant rule of law concerns. They include perceived abuses of the asylum system by applicants, but they also include the array of legal and practical barriers to accessing the asylum system, inadequate scrutiny by particular adjudicators, threats to the adjudicators' decisional independence, and US deviations from its international legal obligations.