AFP Foundation Responds to Law Profs Advocating for Abusing Emergency Powers

AFP Foundation’s Thomas Kimbrell and Kevin Schmidt write in the Yale Journal on Regulation responding to Berkeley Law Professors Elena Chachko and Katerina Linos’ “Emergency Powers for Good,” published in the William & Mary Law Review. Chachko and Linos argue that in some cases, “invoking emergency powers is the only viable way to break deadlock and enact long overdue reforms.”

The “Emergency Powers for Good” framework is a thinly veiled attempt to legitimize the use of emergency powers laws to enact progressive policy by circumventing democratic processes, checks and balances, and the rule of law.  Despite the authors’ claims that transformative but unlawful actions during emergencies can be “legitimate” if they meet their arbitrary criteria, undermining the separation of powers, democratic institutions, rule of law, and the Constitution is anything but legitimate.

Read the full piece, “Unlawful Actions for Good.”