Notre Dame Law Review Volume 83 | Issue 1 Article 5 11-1-2007 The ommC andeerer in Chief Jason Mazzone Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr Recommended Citation Jason Mazzone, The Commandeerer in Chief, 83 Notre Dame L. Rev. 265 (2007). Available at: http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol83/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by NDLScholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Notre Dame Law Review by an authorized administrator of NDLScholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE COMMANDEERER IN CHIEF Jason Mazzone* As HurricaneKatrina demonstrated,federalism can impede the govern- ment's ability to plan for and respond to emergencies. Many emergencies tran- scend federalist divisions of power and responsibility, rendering unclear which level of government should respond. In addition, while emergencies may require a coordinatedresponse by local, state, and nationalgovernment, getting different levels of government to work together in times of crises is difficult. Further, even when states and localities callfor outside assistance, they tend to resist undue federal interference in their affairs; a national government that lacks experience working with local actors on the ground canfind it difficult to implement relief programs. Given the widely recognizedfailures of the govern- ment's response to Katrina and the urgent need for reform, some federal officials have proposed that, in a future emergency, rather than try to work with state and local response personnel, the federal government should simply deploy the military to take over the relief effort. This Article presents an alternative solu- tion: emergency commandeering. This solution would allow the federal govern- ment, when it responds to certain kinds of emergencies, to call into periods of mandatoryfederal service the emergency response personnel of the state in which the emergency occurs, and, if necessary, emergency response personnelfrom other states. These state employees--police, firefighters, emergency medical techni- cians, urban search and rescue teams, and public health specialists-would serve with compensation under the command of the President. Emergency com- mandeering allows the nationalgovernment to mount an effective response, one that draws upon the skills and experiences of state and localpersonnel, without the hindrance of multiple command structures or otherforms of state and local resistance. Emergency commandeering is authorized by the Constitution, con- sistent with federalism, and, compared to the alternative of sending the military into our streets, good for democracy. © 2007 Jason Mazzone. Individuals and nonprofit institutions may reproduce and distribute copies of this Article in any format, at or below cost, for educational purposes, so long as each copy identifies the author, provides a citation to the Notre Dame Law Review, and includes this provision and copyright notice. * Associate Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School. I am grateful for the support of the Brooklyn Law School Dean's Summer Research Stipend Program. NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW [VOL. 83:1 Cedant arma togae. -Cicero' INTRODUCTION Emergencies challenge federalism. For one thing, emergencies do not abide by the "distinction" that "the Constitution requires ... between what is truly national and what is truly local." 2 Rather than correspond neatly to the particular divisions of government the system has devised, emergencies traverse geographic and political boundaries and demand responses from administrative units that (aside from being affected by the same incident) might have little in common. Hurricanes and their aftermath are rarely confined to a single town or a single state; earthquakes ignore state lines; contaminated food can produce simultaneous public health crises in New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco. Even when emergencies do arise in distinct loca- tions, they often have broader regional or national effects. Thus, while the airplanes hijacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001, struck three specific sites (Manhattan, Washington, D.C., and Somer- set County, Pennsylvania), the effects of those attacks-political, eco- nomic, and social-radiated throughout the country. In addition, when an emergency transcends the preexisting struc- tural divisions of political authority, it can be unclear just who is sup- posed to respond. If, for example, an airplane from Boston's Logan Airport hits an office building in Manhattan, are New York City offi- cials responsible for organizing the response effort because they are closest to the scene? Or does responsibility fall on state government (which might have greater resources), or on the federal government (because an aviation incident is a national concern)? If travelers from Asia bring avian flu to Southern California, are local officials responsi- ble for organizing inoculations and quarantine because health is the business of local government? Or should federal officials take charge because if the disease is not contained, it will produce a national cri- sis? A nuclear weapon might be smuggled to the United States by sea: who should be responsible for checking cargo containers that arrive in Newark en route to Des Moines? In the absence of some corrective mechanism, federalism can easily produce a failure of government. Unless issues of authority and responsibility are resolved well in 1 CICERO, DE OFFIcIIS 78 (Walter Miller trans., MacMillan Co. 1921) (literally translating to "[l]et arms yield to the toga" and more loosely "[1]et military power give way to civilian authority"). 2 United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 617-18 (2000) (citing United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 568 (1995)). 2007] THE COMMANDEERER IN CHIEF advance, it is possible, perhaps even likely, that no level of govern- ment will prepare sufficiently for or respond satisfactorily to an emer- gency when it does occur. When responsibility is dispersed, the overall response can easily prove inadequate. Further, in many emergencies an effective response requires the contributions of officials from multiple levels of government-local, state, and national-as well as the use of resources from multiple gov- ernmental units. 3 Here, too, federalism presents obstacles. Where responsibility for mounting the response is or can be divided up among multiple power holders, the effectiveness of the response often depends upon the ability of these power holders to cooperate, or at least to coordinate their actions. This might be beyond the system's capacities. Federalism does not necessarily include built-in mecha- nisms for suspending the normal independent operations of the existing divisions of governmental authority and getting the parts of the system to work together as one. Dilemmas of collective action can easily thwart an adequate emergency response: officials at one level of government might refuse to provide assistance beyond what they per- ceive to be in their own immediate interest or they might refuse to cede control over their own resources. Even if a powerful coordina- tor-for instance the national government-has the necessary will to force coordination-its efforts, particularly if made in the heat of the moment-might be undermined by resistance and incompetence on 4 the ground. Finally, federalism also risks a long-term pathology because the experience with failure might not readily lead to learning and imple- menting necessary reforms. In a centralized system of government, responsibility for responding to emergencies is clear: it lies, ultimately, with the officials who occupy the center. Perhaps the central govern- ment will not respond adequately (it might lack sufficient personnel and resources, the necessary organizational skills, or simply the incli- nation). But if there is a failure of governmental response, the blame, by definition, rests at the center. By contrast, in a federal system of government, where authority and responsibility are divided up and dispersed, blame is not so easily assigned. As a formal matter, it may 3 See, e.g., Wendy E. Parmet, After September 11: Rethinking Public Health Federalism, 30J.L. MED. & ETHICS 201, 201-04 (2002) (discussing the roles of multiple levels of government in responding to bioterrorism). 4 See Audio tape: Hurricane Katrina: Where Do We Go From Here? (Sept. 8, 2005) (transcript available at http://www.brookings.edu/comm/events/2005 0908.pdf) (noting that "our response as a nation is highly interdependent" and "if one layer of government or one agency within one layer of government gets [things] catastrophically wrong, the entire response will be handicapped as a result of that"). NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW [VOL. 83:1 be uncertain which level of government (national, state, or local) bears responsibility for responding to any particular kind of emer- gency: the U.S. Constitution says nothing, for example, about hurri- canes. Even if one level of government assumes responsibility and mounts a response, resulting deficiencies might be attributed to inter- ference by or the shortcomings of another level of government. State government can say that it didn't know the crisis was coming because the federal government had information it didn't share; that the fed- eral government didn't come through with anticipated resources and assistance; and that when the state itself tried to act, federal bureau- crats got in the way. The federal government can claim that it stood ready but nobody asked for its help, and out