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Separations of Wealth: Inequality and the Erosion of Checks and Balances Kate Andrias University of Michigan Law School, [email protected]

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Separations of Wealth: Inequality and the Erosion of Checks and Balances Kate Andrias University of Michigan Law School, Kandrias@Umich.Edu University of Michigan Law School University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository Articles Faculty Scholarship 2016 Separations of Wealth: Inequality and the Erosion of Checks and Balances Kate Andrias University of Michigan Law School, [email protected] Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/1724 Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Law and Politics Commons, and the President/Executive Department Commons Recommended Citation Andrias, Kate. "Separations of Wealth: Inequality and the Erosion of Checks and Balances." U. Pa. J. Const. L. 18, no. 2 (2015): 419-504. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SEPARATIONS OF WEALTH: INEQUALITY AND THE EROSION OF CHECKS AND BALANCES Kate Andrias*** ABSTRACT American government is dysfunctional: Gridlock, filibusters, and expanding presidential power, everyone seems to agree, threaten our basic system of constitutional governance. Who, or what, is to blame? In the standard account, the fault lies with the increasing polarization of our political parties. That standard story, however, ignores an important culprit: Concentrated wealth and its organization to achieve political ends. The only way to understand our current constitutional predicament—and to rectify it—is to pay more attention to the role that organized wealth plays in our system of checks and balances. This Article shows that the increasing concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of the wealthy elite, and the concomitant decline of countervailing organizations, help explain the extent of executive power, the rise of gridlock, and, ultimately, the deterioration of effective checks and balances in the Federal Government. A core goal of constitutional structure—to promote democratic accountability and responsiveness to the broad citizenry—is severely compromised by the power wielded by organized wealth. Moderating partisanship will not alone solve constitutional dysfunction, nor will conventional good governance reforms like campaign finance regulation. Rather, this Article argues, the law should facilitate organizations of ordinary Americans that can serve as a countervailing check and prod in governance. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .............................................................................. 420 I. THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF SEPARATING, CHECKING, AND BALANCING POWER ......................................................... 429 II. THE POWER OF ORGANIZED WEALTH ...................................... 436 * Assistant Professor, Michigan Law School. For helpful comments, I would like to thank Reuven Avi-Yonah, Sam Bagenstos, Nicholas Bagley, Robert Bauer, Ashley Deeks, Willy Forbath, Daniel Halberstam, Scott Hershovitz, Don Herzog, Daryl Levinson, Ellen Katz, Nina Mendelson, Gabe Mendlow, Julian Mortenson, Bill Novak, Rick Pildes, David Pozen, Richard Primus, Daphna Renan, Gil Seinfeld, Kate Shaw, Mila Sohoni, Tabatha Abu El- Haj, and participants at workshops at Michigan, Emory, Loyola Chicago, NYU, and Stan- ford law schools. Rebecca Eisenbrey and Lexi Peacock provided excellent research assis- tance. Thanks also to the editors at the Journal of Constitutional Law and to the research librarians at the Michigan Law library. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the generous sup- port of the William W. Cook Endowment of the University of Michigan. ** The online version of this Article contains a minor change from the print edition. This change does not affect the author's argument or any substantive portions of the text. 419 420 JOURNAL OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW [Vol. 18:2 A. Organized Wealth in Politics ............................................ 437 B. Organized Wealth in the Branches .................................... 444 C. Organized Wealth in the Parties ....................................... 452 D. A Coda: Outcomes for Governance .................................... 456 III. ASSESSING THE “FIFTH BRANCH”: THE EFFECTS OF ORGANIZED WEALTH ON EXECUTIVE POWER AND LEGISLATIVE CAPACITY ........................................................... 461 A. Unified Government ....................................................... 462 B. Divided Government and Gridlock .................................... 471 C. Administrative Checks ..................................................... 475 IV. ORGANIZED WEALTH AND THE FUNCTIONS OF CONSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURE ............................................... 481 A. Functions of Constitutional Structure ................................ 481 1. Liberty .................................................................... 481 2. Efficacy ................................................................... 483 3. Democratic Accountability ......................................... 485 B. Reforming Constitutional Law ......................................... 487 1. Enhanced Judicial Review ......................................... 487 2. Problems with Heightened Judicial Review ................... 491 C. Democratic Institutional Design and the Law of Organization ................................................................ 493 1. From Moderation and Insulation to Participation and Organization ......................................................... 493 2. Building Countervailing Organization ....................... 499 INTRODUCTION Everyone seems to agree: American government is dysfunctional.1 Politicians are continuously at each other’s throats. Congress is para- lyzed. Budgets are not enacted; legislation is not passed. Americans’ faith in government suffers. What is to blame? According to the standard narrative the prob- lem is political polarization. Hyperpolarized political parties mean that, during unified government, the legislative and executive branches collude and the executive operates with few constraints. 1 THOMAS E. MANN & NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN, IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN IT LOOKS: HOW THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM COLLIDED WITH THE NEW POLITICS OF EXTREMISM, at xii–xiv (2012); see also David E. Pozen, Self-Help and the Separation of Powers, 124 YALE L.J. 2, 9 (2014) (describing the “gridlocked, agonistic ‘Age of Dysfunction’ that we now inhab- it”); Jonathan Zasloff, Courts in the Age of Dysfunction, 121 YALE L.J. ONLINE 479, 480 (2012) (collecting sources). Dec. 2015] SEPARATIONS OF WEALTH 421 During divided government, gridlock ensues.2 The President and the administrative state fill the vacuum, energetically wielding executive power to partisan ends.3 To solve our problems, commentators as- sert, we must moderate partisanship. There is a lot of truth to this standard account. But it is not the whole story. If we want to understand our current predicament—and if we hope to have any chance of pulling ourselves out of it—we need to focus not only on partisanship but also on the problem of concen- trated wealth and its organization to achieve political ends. After a period of shared prosperity following the New Deal and World War II, the United States has, over the last generation, experi- enced a dramatic rise in economic inequality. Disparities in income and wealth are at levels not seen since the Gilded Age.4 Rising ine- quality has been accompanied by the concentration, or re- concentration, of political power among wealthy individuals, large business firms, and organized groups representing them, as well as by a precipitous decline of countervailing organization among middle- and low-income Americans.5 Organized wealth has overtaken other civic and social organizations as the key driving force in American politics. Recent scholarly assessment of money in governance has focused on whether it encourages corruption and capture.6 But what the lit- erature has almost entirely overlooked is how wealth affects constitu- tional structure, particularly the separation of powers and the opera- 2 Richard H. Pildes, Why the Center Does Not Hold: The Causes of Hyperpolarized Democracy in America, 99 CAL. L. REV. 273, 333 (2011) (arguing that the consequences of “radically po- larized parties” are “unified government without meaningful checks and balances, and divided government that is paralyzed”). 3 See, e.g., BRUCE ACKERMAN, THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 120 (2010). 4 See, e.g., THOMAS PIKETTY, CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 347–50 (Arthur Gold- water trans., 2014); JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ, THE PRICE OF INEQUALITY, at xxxiv (2013). 5 See, e.g., LEE DRUTMAN, THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA IS LOBBYING: HOW CORPORATIONS BECAME POLITICIZED AND POLITICS BECAME MORE CORPORATE 9–15, 71 (2015); THEDA SKOCPOL, DIMINISHED DEMOCRACY: FROM MEMBERSHIP TO MANAGEMENT IN AMERICAN CIVIC LIFE 128–74 (2003); Martin Gilens & Benjamin I. Page, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, 12 PERSP. ON POL. 564, 576–77 (2014); see also, Nicholas Confessore et al., Small Pool of Rich Donors Dominates Election Giving, N.Y. TIMES (Aug. 1, 2015), http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/small-pool-of-rich- donors-dominates-election-giving.html (“Fewer than four hundred families are responsi- ble for almost half the money raised in the 2016 presidential campaign, a concentration of political donors that
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