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The anti-commandeering doctrine, recently announced by the Supreme Court in New York v. United States & Printz v. United States, prohibits the federal government from commandeering state governments -- more specifically, from imposing targeted, affirmative, coercive duties upon state legislators or executive officials. This doctrine is best understood as an external constraint upon congressional power -- analogous to the constraints set forth in the bill of rights -- but one that lacks an explicit textual basis. Should the Constitution indeed be interpreted to include a judicially enforceable constraint upon national power -- & if so, should that constraint take the form of an anti-commandeering rule? 27 References. Adapted from the source document.

What are the methodologies that we should employ for designing and evaluating governmental policy, in light of the profound effects that policies have on the level and distribution of individuals' well-being? The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary treatment of this question, drawing from welfare economics, moral philosophy, and psychology. It covers policy-assessment methodologies, both established and emerging, and reviews philosophical conceptions of well-being, and the literature on "subjective well-being" in psychology and economics. Further chapters focus specifically on well-being measurement, and a variety of challenges for policy assessment.

Prioritarianism is a moral view that ranks outcomes according to the sum of a strictly increasing and strictly concave transformation of individual well-being. Prioritarianism is 'welfarist' (namely, it satisfies axioms of Pareto Indifference, Strong Pareto, and Anonymity) as well as satisfying three further axioms: Pigou–Dalton (formalizing the property of giving greater weight to those who are worse off), Separability, and Continuity. Philosophical discussion of prioritarianism was galvanized by Derek Parfit's 1991 Lindley Lecture. Since then, and notwithstanding Parfit's support, a variety of criticisms of prioritarianism have been advanced: by utilitarians (such as John Broome and Hilary Greaves), egalitarians (such as Lara Buchak; Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve; Ingmar Persson; and Larry Temkin), and sufficientists (Roger Crisp).In previous work, we have each endorsed prioritarianism. This article sets forth a renewed defense, in the light of the accumulated criticisms. We clarify the concept of a prioritarian moral view (here addressing work by David McCarthy), discuss the application of prioritarianism under uncertainty (herein of 'ex post' and 'ex ante' prioritarianism), distinguish between person-affecting and impersonal justifications, and provide a person-affecting case for prioritarianism. We then describe the various challenges mounted against prioritarianism – utilitarian, egalitarian, and sufficientist – and seek to counter each of them.

"Prioritarianism is a framework for ethical assessment that gives extra weight to the worse off. Unlike utilitarianism, which simply adds up well-being numbers, prioritarianism is sensitive to the distribution of well-being across the population of ethical concern. Prioritarianism in Practice examines the use of prioritarianism as a policy-evaluation methodology-across a range of policy domains, including taxation, health policy, risk regulation, climate change, education, and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic-and as an indicator of a society's condition (as contrasted with GDP). This chapter is an introductory chapter to the Prioritarianism in Practice volume. It surveys the intellectual roots of prioritarianism: in the philosophical literature, in welfare economics, and in scholarship about public health. And it provides brief summaries of each of the volume's chapters. This chapter provides theoretical foundations for the Prioritarianism in Practice volume, by clarifying the features of prioritarian social welfare functions (SWFs). A prioritarian SWF sums up individuals' well-being numbers plugged into a strictly increasing and strictly increasing transformation function. Prioritarian SWFs, like the utilitarian SWF, fall within the "generalized utilitarian" class of SWFs. Generalized-utilitarian SWFs are additive and, hence, especially tractable for purposes of policy analysis. The chapter reviews the axiomatic properties of generalized utilitarian SWFs and, specifically, of prioritarian SWFs. Prioritarianism satisfies the Pigou-Dalton axiom (a pure, gap-diminishing transfer of well-being from a better-off to a worse-off person is an ethical improvement), while utilitarianism does not. Pigou-Dalton is the axiomatic expression of the fact that a prioritarian SWF gives extra weight (priority) to well-being changes affecting worse-off individuals. The chapter also discusses the informational requirements of prioritarian SWFs (as regards interpersonal well-being comparisons). It reviews the various methodologies for applying a prioritarian SWF under uncertainty. And it describes the two main subfamilies of prioritarian SWFs, namely Atkinson and Kolm-Pollak SWFs"--

This volume includes both jurisprudence, using the U.S. as a 'test case' that highlights the strengths and limitations of the rule of recognition model, and constitutional theory, by showing how the model can illuminate topics such as the role of the Supreme Court, the constitutional status of precedent, and much more

Introduction / Matthew D. Adler and Kenneth Einar Himma -- The rule of recognition and the Constitution / Kent Greenawalt -- Precedent-based constitutional adjudication, acceptance, and the rule of recognition / Richard H. Fallon, Jr -- How the written constitution crowds out the extra-constitutional rule of recognition / Michael C. Dorf -- Understanding the relationship between the U.S. Cconstitution and the conventional rule of recognition / Kenneth Einar Himma -- Four concepts of validity : reflections on inclusive and exclusive positivism / Wil Waluchow -- How to understand the rule of recognition and the American Constitution / Kent Greenawalt -- Rules of recognition, constitutional controversies, and the dizzying dependence of law on acceptance / Larry Alexander and Frederick Schauer -- Social facts, constitutional interpretation, and the rule of recognition / Matthew D. Adler -- What is the rule of recognition (and does it exist)? / Scott J. Shapiro -- Constitutional theory and the rule of recognition : toward a fourth theory of law / Mitchell N. Berman -- Where all have the powers gone : Hartian rules of recognition, noncognitivsm, and the constitutional and jurisprudential foundations of law / Stephen Perry -- Who needs rules of recognition? / Jeremy Waldron -- Kelsen, quietism, and the rule of recognition / Michael Steven Green