From the founding era to the turn of the twentieth century, Congress has at times asserted its power over elections robustly and creatively, even in periods of judicial obstruction, and its role in shaping the nation’s electoral landscape has always been pivotal – even when contested, uneven, or ineffective. This period invokes a rich and overlooked history that reveals a repository of federal authority over elections that was triggered (or ignored) less for reasons of federalism, and more so due to pragmatic, principled, or partisan considerations.

With Reconstruction in its death throes, Congress sporadically used its power under Article I, Section 5, to review the elections of its members and, in the process, police racial discrimination in voting, even though much of the disenfranchisement written in law was ostensibly race neutral. As illustrated in Chapter 9, Congress fought back against these disenfranchising regimes, which were adopted across the South over the course of the 1890s and set the tone for the exclusion of Black voters from American politics for almost a century. Congress’s efforts during this period bring this book back to a reoccurring theme: that political limitations, rather than constitutional constraints like federalism, were more of a barrier to the broad implementation of federal power over elections.

Richard L. Fox analyzes the historical evolution of women running for seats in the US Congress. The fundamental question he addresses is why women continue to be so underrepresented in the congressional ranks. Fox examines the experiences of female and male candidates for Congress by comparing fundraising totals and vote totals through the 2024 elections. While acknowledging the historic number of women candidates in 2022 and 2024, his analysis also explores the subtler ways that gender dynamics manifest in the electoral arena, examining regional variation in the performance of women and men running for Congress, the difficulty of change in light of the incumbency advantage, and gender differences in political ambition to serve in the House or Senate. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the degree to which gender still plays an important role in congressional elections and the prospects for gender parity in the future.

This chapter defends the nondelegation doctrine, arguing that the Constitution’s text, structure, and history prohibit Congress from delegating legislative power to the President or subordinate agencies. Textually, the Vesting Clause is an exclusive grant of legislative power to Congress and the Constitution omits any clause permitting delegation. Structurally, each branch is institutionally designed to performs its function effectively, a design disrupted if Congress cedes lawmaking authority to the executive. Historically, Madison’s warnings against power accumulation and other early statutes, discussions, and adjudications align with an “intelligible principle” or “important subjects” test, which refutes revisionist claims of broad delegations. The chapter critiques the Supreme Court’s lenient modern standard for upholding vague delegations, and proposes a reinvigorated doctrine requiring Congress to set major policies, preserving its deliberative function and preventing executive overreach.

From the founding of the Constitution, there has been a steady expansion of national power and an erosion of state powers. Notwithstanding the enumeration of its powers, Congress has enacted legislation impacting almost every aspect of American life. The Supreme Court has, with rare exceptions, accommodated the Congress’ intrusions on the powers of the state governments.

Failure to adequately constrain factions is reflected most prominently in partisan gridlock in Congress, Congressional abdication of constitutional authorities and responsibilities, the political divide in the appointment of federal judges, the perception of partisan influence on judicial decisions, and the growth of the administrative state.

Chapter 5 returns to discussions of the law at the federal level. It reconstructs debates over defunding the law in Congress and in the federal agencies, arguing that the Children’s Bureau leadership learned from their trouble administering Sheppard-Towner programs through the states. Giving states ultimate authority over programming had meant that each state director documented their Sheppard-Towner work differently – if they did so at all. When it came time to renew federal appropriations in Congress, the Bureau staff found itself unable to create and present national statistics on the workings of state programs. Children’s Bureau leaders recognized that they would have to take more control over state-level accounting in subsequent legislation if they hoped to maintain their claim to expertise through accurate reporting. In the meantime, without reliable national data, the Bureau had little ability to defend its use of federal dollars when conservatives swept Washington in the 1926 election and the law came under attack. A few years later, in a political climate much more friendly to federal intervention, the Bureau staff was able to implement the oversight they learned they needed in their administration of Title V of the Social Security Act.

The District of Columbia, a federal district overseen by Congress, was a constitutional battleground where freedom nationalists, proslavery firebrands, and supporters of sectional harmony clashed over federal responsibility for slavery. From 1838 to 1859, US Representative Joshua Giddings (Ohio) insisted that the federal government had no constitutional authority to uphold slavery there. His signature claim was that the framers had granted northern states the right not to be made complicit in slavery through any action or policy of the federal government, beyond the Constitution’s requirements. Giddings railed against the persistent battering of this political and moral quarantine. The sensational attempt by over seventy-five enslaved Black residents to flee the nation’s capital in 1848 onboard the Pearl brought unprecedented attention to Giddings’ defense of northern purity rights. This chapter examines Giddings’ notion of a northern right to political innocence and its role in his congressional brawls over slavery in the District of Columbia.

Abraham Lincoln's political writings were the works of a practical politician, not a political philosopher. Yet, his understanding of American politics was deeply informed by wide and penetrating reading in 19th century liberal political economy. This reading convinced him to be a determined opponent of slavery, and a vigorous promoter of henry clay's 'American system.' both of these programs retained their hold on Lincoln, and when, after his election to the presidency of the United States in 1860, the republic was plunged into civil war over slavery, Lincoln guided the nation toward the erasure of legalized slavery and to an economy favourable to commerce and manufacturing. His victory in the civil war, cut short by his assassination in 1865, nevertheless changed the political culture of the nation for the next sixty years, and set the country on the slow but inexorable path of civil equality for the freed slaves.

Chapter 11 compares incentive bargaining of law-making in the three countries, focusing on corporate law and securities regulations. Section 11.1 describes major lawmakers and law-making procedures by categorizing corporate law and securities regulations into statutory law, case law, and soft law. The distinct characteristic of US corporate law is the existence of competition among states. In Japan, drafters of statutory corporate law and securities regulations are bureaucrats of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), the Ministry of Economic, Trade, and Industries (METI), and the Financial Service Agency (FSA). In China, although the National People’s Congress (NPC) is the supreme legislative body, it delegates law-making at several levels to many agencies. Section 11.2 introduces several examples of incentive bargaining in law-making in the three countries. In the United States, legislative lobbying also took place at both the Federal and state levels. In Japan, the incentive bargaining on corporate law-making had taken place almost exclusively in the Committee of Legal Reform. Legislation of corporate law in China includes several steps of procedure and inter-agency incentive bargaining.

Chapter 10 looks ahead to where the direct sales wars may go in the immediate and longer-term future. It makes the case that the dealers have bigger fish to fry – such as ride sharing, artificial intelligence (AI), and autonomous vehicles – than companies that try to sell their own cars. The book ends with a call for sober thinking among all stakeholders about how automobiles will be sold, serviced, owned, shared, and used after the next technological revolution.

Spring 1971 represented the final consequential leftist and radical impact on the Vietnam antiwar movement. The spring offensive demonstrations took place in a compressed two-week period in Washington, DC. Veterans also played a key role in revealing American war crimes. Liberals maintained antiwar pressure largely by concentrating on the continuing US air war. Allies within the government helped produce the twenty-sixth constitutional amendment lowering the voting age to eighteen. The movement continued evolving during the 1972 presidential contest. National coalitions and mass demonstrations gave way to smaller collaborations and more focused projects. Military veterans conducted war crimes investigations, activists withheld war taxes and pressured corporate militarists, citizens defended First Amendment rights against government disinformation, unique projects provided entertainment and advertising, and the entire movement confronted the air war. As military realities brought the war’s end closer, the antiwar movement mobilized street demonstrations but worked primarily through electoral politics.

The 1973 Paris Accords provided only a temporary respite from the war. As the war between the Vietnamese continued, antiwar forces focused initially on carrying out the agreement, then on ending US military and financial support for the Thieu regime. The Watergate scandal undermined the final obstacle to ending America’s commitment. The war’s 1975 conclusion brought more relief than excitement.

One of the main challenges faced by the missionaries and their US supporters was the renewal of their short-term visas. The State Department repeatedly urged its Italian counterparts to consider issuing permanent or long-term residence permits, hoping to eliminate one of the most contentious points of the ongoing dispute. While the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was generally sympathetic to these proposals and sought to accommodate Washington’s requests, it faced significant resistance from Mario Scelba, the inflexible interior minister, as well as repeated pressures from the Vatican. The Vatican followed the matter with interest and concern, viewing the presence of Protestant missionaries as a potential threat to Italy’s Catholic identity and spiritual unity. Catholic propaganda leaned heavily on familiar anti-Protestant tropes, portraying Protestantism as a foreign import, threatening the country’s cohesion and spiritual unity, which, it was argued, was essential to counter the Communist threat. The visa issue became a constant point of contention, resolved only through temporary solutions and case-by-case renewals. Meanwhile, the missionaries frequently clashed with Italian authorities, who sporadically (and inconsistently) harassed them by shutting down preaching halls or preventing access to their facilities.

Chapter 4 explores why Trump has perceived an opportunity to openly test the U.S. military’s commitment to IHL. Section 4.1 analyzes the role of ideological subcultures in overriding formal doctrines relating to IHL. Section 4.2 turns to why Trump has perceived that Fox News and GOP Congress members could help him to appeal to conservatives and pockets of right-wing extremism in America’s military. Section 4.3 documents the rise of far-right subcultures in the military, both before and after Trump’s two electoral wins in 2016 and 2024. Finally, Section 4.4 presents a short case study of disproportionate military involvement in the January 6 Capitol riot. Although not a foreign battlefield, the case illustrates how Trump and his allies could lead combatants to discount norms of restraint, even to the point of attacking civilians on American soil.

Chapter 2 explains how Trump has gained the means to overtly challenge IHL. Section 2.1 presents case studies of how Fox News and Trump allies in Congress both inspired and defended two rounds of high-profile clemencies during his first term. The first, occurring roughly six months after Trump had pardoned Michael Behenna in May 2019, preempted the court martial of Mathew Golsteyn, commuted the sentence of Clint Lorance, and restored the rank of Eddie Gallagher. The second set occurred roughly a year later, when Trump pardoned four Blackwater contractors, part of the “Raven 23” convoy, who had been jailed for murdering fourteen Iraqi civilians during the 2007 “Nisour Square Massacre.” Section 2.2 documents how these clemencies are not isolated events but part of a broader challenge to international law.