Book as director of legal policy and he holds a jd and mba from yale and a ba in economics and other firm chapel hill as a morehead scholar glad to have you with us. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Its always a pleasure to speak to those at the foundation i have said it before add a National Think tank so much policy happens on the state level and it is a Gold Standard think tank that has helped me to shape North Carolina and a lot of the resilience right now to have found a cisco flooding in the middle of a pandemic is due to the great work the John Locke Foundation has done thank you. Thank you for those comments you actually live in North Carolina so your book writes about federal policy but you follow state Public Policy as well and hopefully after we talk about your book you will get your take what is happening with Governor Cooper and Emergency Powers use here in North Carolina but i have to tell you the book is unelected you can buy the book now i think my colleagues are posting in the comments section where you can get your copy. Tell us about the key themes from your book and why you wrote it. Really the key theme is people dont understand just how much government activity that oversees our lives and some of the stories we will talk about later in the book tragically has influenced for some people and in others given headaches but how much of that goes forward no matter how we felt that doesnt mean elections dont matter. Congress matters the Council Estate and here we elect judges and justices and they matter a lot. Its not that they dont matter but they only capture the incomplete picture there are a couple million employees 50 states and thousands of municipalities in well over 1 million private lawyers to influence those litigation systems. We have heard attacks and then just to stay away in that partisan view to look at that more telescopically and what the government is doing that departs from the constitutional design. Clearly had its laws in the beginning and the constitution had to animating principles one was the notion of limited government and then to go back to john locke and in the notion to have a publicly Accountable Government some ways acted to get things done ultimately accountable to people the representative democratic principles as well as the limited government with that constitutional design and those that have been substantially eroded its hardly a surprise to look at the incredible roles of government so as the final epilogue of chapter 14 looking at how much the government has grown even adjusted for inflation thats 10 Million Congress cannot agree the next level of covert relief with 1 trillion on that side and a lot of people have written about this but i tend to agree with a limited government types and the personal responsibility in these types of questions and the ethical Big Government generally and there is a caveat where it makes sense from the original constitutional design but what we havent paid attention to what is the concept we have foss public accountability and the work that i have done in the think tank world have dovetailed on all these issues like tort reform and civil litigation and regulation in that criminalization and the John Locke Foundation and corporate government Securities Law come back to the Central Point where we see a lot of government being done and liberty being lost from individuals who were acting without public accountability and we see significant radicals in the legal and regulatory structure without congress ever taking a vote and then deciding to do so that so thats a principle piece of the book so thats broken down into the four categories and to reform one of them wouldnt necessarily change as we might think. And with that accountability so the first of these are what we call the role makers if they grow up in seventies or eighties or nineties are growing up and see the cartoons on saturday mornings edging on they would see schoolhouse rock in among those is im just a bill. And that describes how a bill becomes a law. That this is a lot the way rules are elected on and acted so with criminal law we dont know how many federal crimes there are theres too much to know but the estimate is around 300,000 and federal crimes exist of those 98 percent so you need to make a rulemaking agency and they drafted the rules in Congress Never saw those rules again and then they go to prison and get in trouble and of course the same thing is true across a civil lawsuit its quite a departure they couldnt make new lawmakers with a new deal of the progressive era. And that is a seachange with a rulemaking of the last 90 years or so. That both parties do do it with the Trump Administration and they are abrogating private mortgage contracts across the country and then not to have an agency this is an independent agency or to come up unilaterally with those constitutional questions to be raised but clearly a forward move from a bill becoming a law and with those unelected actors those are what i call the enforces and that is important to keep in mind to make it too hard to create new rules and paying attention to enforcement action thats more lawless than the ad hoc threat of force i compare it to the godfather this is an offer you cant refuse so dealing with the federal government they have your business totally under control so with the military contractor if the federal government says you cant then you are out of business if you are a Pharmaceutical Company that says you cant be reimbursed you can do business if your Financial Company they say you lose your license to practice you are out of business. So the strong arm of the federal government comes into play but the deliver on but the problem is that its a bigger problem in some respects the family farmers and individuals they have large compliance teams lawyers with fancy degrees to study the rules and regulations they cannot comply perfectly but the government can strong arm to create regulations far beyond whatever was authorized as a sanction for conduct but at least they tried to comply. And how were they supposed to comply in this happens at the state level which is why we didnt report with the John Locke Foundation to talk about over criminalizing the state and those same principles exist on the state level. And the resources for enforcement and certainly at the federal level where we see strongarming big business so they have done a lot to strong arm entire industries with bad consequences so those are what we talk about in the Administrative State so at some level they do go through the appointment and confirmation process not like free radicals but there Civil Service employees underneath with a lot of autonomy and essentially were in the running of the checks and balances of the Founding Fathers to put into the constitution. So to slow down the various. And the people that are there for behind the scenes and thats basically correct i want to over emphasize that with that Emergency Apparatus is with the president ial election cycle but the best part of the problem is we do so much stock in president ial elections because the executive branch has so much authority and of course is true with the judiciary they told the exit pollsters of federal judicial appointments this would shock the Founding Fathers not that they didnt think judges were important but the number one issue so it can be slow down as the courts one step forward to step backward approach so with the last administration of course barack obama after not persuading congress to do what he wanted and the Trump Administration tried to reverse it and then with that executive action has a life of its own. But it can be reversed back with the next election is not a lot of permanency and by and large to review that they have brought to bear the Administrative State that tend to get of a hard and close look to reversals of regulatory action there is a lot of deference given in the first instance in the new administration tries to undo those regulations thats harder to do those in the first place so it is backwards but thats the review system we have right now. So essentially you are saying it does matter on who you elect for president it can go back and forth with the executive orders but it does matter. It does. But not all the government is a sponsor but then it goes through the principal talking about the independent agencies and essentially the courts have allowed independent agencies with the cause i legislative powers and staggered terms of rule makers like the fcc and sec while there are president ial appointments in place for the Minority Party and staggered terms. And then to create a little continuity to those structures but its from the basic constitutional design and these sorts of bodies are delegated broadly in the white house and does not have that power. So the big problem is you often get true believers so you get people who are committed to can or Securities Law or those that me and the agency that have a certain view of the world and most of those Civil Servants tend to skew in a certain direction that you would get a deregulatory champion so you have this problem in every country has a legal system and then to adjudicate disputes and even the public legal system so talk about criminal law and thats with a lot of scrutiny right now and civil law which is private party bringing her disputes the government over property or contracts or tort which is injury law which it is not necessarily predicated on a preexisting relationship although a lot of cases now fall under tort law so the products we buy there are contractions of those and then you voluntarily buy it but they govern those lawsuits. Is this where classaction comes in . That is a variant of the tort lawsuit and is a relatively recent creation. The third part of the book talks about the litigators and what they mean. The folks who are litigating private disputes and those who are skeptical of government power to say this is better than the Administrative State. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isnt that makes no mistake it is still state action nobody is by choice but thats because another person sues them in the states monopoly to enable the plaintiff to recover. If the legal system works well with a lowcost way to resolve the disputes to talk about accidents is one thing to say this is deeply rooted in the federal constitution, but the original conception it was a very narrow area of law. Very difficult to get into court and in the early days into even testify in court if you assume any sort of risk you would not collect if you are negligent you would not collect. But these rules were scaled back over time and we developed the plaintiffs part of a feed mechanism so certainly the european country in those asian exceptions if you breathing a lawsuit in court you have to reimburse the other sides fee but thats not our system works. If you defend your lawsuit successfully you can still lose some a woman who wanted to read one renovate a Historic Hotel and put a lot of money into it and let a friend of a friend stay there and that individual got a plaintiffs lawyer to file a disability lawsuit. Of course it wasnt up to disability code yet but it was a shakedown lawsuit give me 15000 and will go away. She won the case but she lost more than hundred thousand dollars to win the case which is why you get the shakedown lawsuit in the first place. So thats a way to add a bunch of cases together in the most famous security classaction have the biggest law practice in the world with no clients. But thats how it works the lawyer to follow him filed the lawsuit they could be thousands or millions in the case the attorney is on one side reaching the settlement this was recently invented with the federal rules first created the procedural rules for litigation came under the modern genesis so the dean developed all the new rules and then someone files it without proof and then you have to turn over all your emails and sit down for depositions thats an american rule and then in the sixties they kept this committee around and a harvard professor and his protege from columbia with the modern day classaction rule you are in the class unless you opt out so they create the class send you something in the mail they create that on a typewriter. It never existed before they drafted it. So we have these crazy shakedown classaction suits as a defense for a rule. But the rules tend to be skewed on behalf of the state power to bear in addition to rule makers and if enforcers and then to go back and forth a little bit the new anti federalist. This is important to because most of us who support limited government and Classical Liberal principles instinctively stay we are prose states rights and the ordinary case that is great but state legislators can get the policy packaging because people can vote with their feet businesses and capital can vote as well so of california raises taxes in North Carolina doesnt people can leave from california to North Carolina. That the regulatory state is too big, same thing. Similarly in the state doesnt provide the service in schools are horrible and that affects where businesses and people locate as well so it is this implicit market style pressure. But that doesnt always work in litigation. If you just talk about a slip and fall case, sure. If you are sued locally and the state is too permissive than they are less likely to open in the same with medical malpractice. If doctors are sued a lot they can relocate out of state and hospitals can envelop on invest elsewhere so ultimately you pay the price for that. But with the National Commercial lawsuit can be filed anywhere under the current doctrine the courts adopted in the stream of commerce. North carolina can attract the Regulatory Regime but not protect against the lawsuit coming from Madison County illinois from where they call judicial hellholes and then we have seen with the new anti federalism theyre basically dictating policy for everyone else. The mayor of new york tries to change Climate Change policy which is clearly the international question as a federal nexus but to try to do it from city hall in new york or San Francisco we see these cases and the tobacco lawsuits the litigation is farmed out to plaintiffs attorneys to get content contributions and then they hire them. This is driven by state and local officials nobody in charlotte or greensboro voted for the people in new york city or San Francisco or albany. These elected officials are trying to Draft National policy and even when the federal regulators get it right the states actors can come in and try to dictate National Commercial legislation for state and local purposes. Pretty amazing from the Manhattan InstituteJames Copeland talks about the four areas he talks about in his book elected unelected that was a challenge to the federal drug laws convicted under federal law not state law growing marijuana in his backyard i wasnt selling it i was growing it but you had to buy seeds in arguably it could affect the drug trade itself. The president had the same basic logic where the farmer was using his own crops for his own use on his own farm and the federal government said no you have to follow the agricultural regulatory scheme but the Supreme Court let that go. Its a pretty broad rule. I do think there are two conceptual issues. One of course is the contractual issue itself and while congress will make no law with the freedom of contract and should be by the courts there is a pretty big infringement on property rights. So we will have litigation and premised on that but there is the nondelegation doctrine. John locke himself. He was among the original exponents of this in terms of writing it down. He didnt invent the concept that had been over the centuries and they do go through some of that history in the book. But john locke wrote the legislative power to make laws and not legislators and blackstone who was the great chronicle or of the laws of england at the time and the constitution of the United States was enacted to develop the principle that you cannot delegate the lawmaking power so the question is this delegation to the cdc what they are claiming an accurate reading what they delegated by statute so even if congress delegated that power, was that constitutional . And while the court has basically not come back with the nondelegation principles since 1935 the basically signed off on the rest of the new deal with the Roosevelt Administration and have not come back notwithstanding. So they have cap the ability of the executive branch to make a law and this was a doctrine and constitutional law with the major questions doctrine. In the basic principle is if its a big policy that Congress Needs to resolve it but the area of regulating tobacco the fda that tried to claim