Madison on the Meaning of the "General Welfare," the "Purpose" of Enumerated Powers, and the "Definition" of Constitutional Government

According to James Madison, "the most important and fundamentalquestion" he ever addressed was the meaning of and relationbetween the general welfare clause and the enumeration of particularpowers. This question is the most "fundamental" because theanswer determines the very "idea" or "nature" of the U.S. Constitution.Commentators virtually agree on the answer Madison proposedand defended in Federalist 41, namely, that the general welfareclause is neither a statement of ends nor a substantive grantof power. It is a mere "synonym" for the enumeration of particularpowers, which are limited and wholly define its content. Fromthis answer, it follows that the primary meaning of the nationaldimension of the federal Constitution is limited government,understood as a government with a limited number of powers ormeans. The thesis of this essay, however, is that, contraryto the commentators' claims, Madison argued that the clausewas a substantive grant of power for the generally stated endand that the primary purpose of the ensuing enumeration wasto define more particularly the ends alluded to by the phrase"general welfare." Hence, the meaning of the general constitutionalgovernment in the American federal system is a government orientedto a limited number of limited ends.     

Toward an Analytical Framework for the Study of Race and Police Violence

Treatments of race and police violence in the fields of public administration and policy have drawn eclectically from many disciplinary sources in historical, political, and managerial analysis. From an institutional perspective, emphasis has been on how organizational practices, rules, norms, and values, along with role socialization, shape germane behavior. Of particular interest to the authors is the phenomenon of race‐related police violence in its systemic but also attitudinal and behavioral manifestations in the policing role. How does an academic or practitioner researcher specify evaluative perspectives applicable to this policy and administrative challenge? There is a prior need for defined analytical and ethical positions drawing closely from public administration and policy sources. This article suggests ways to develop such grounded frameworks, built on these distinctive traditions but also going beyond them, so as to allow for an integrative approach to evaluative analysis and action on this grave and contentious issue.     

Thoreau in the 21<Superscript>st</Superscript> Century

Laura Dassow Walls’s superb biography of Henry David Thoreau is the most important study of this author thus far in the twenty-first century. Beautifully written, and packed with rich detail and subtle interpretation, Walls’s book teaches us much that is new about Thoreau and, furthermore, prompts us to think more deeply about and reassess this complex person and challenging writer—a writer whose range and mass of published and unpublished work, produced during his all too brief life (he died at age 44), is astounding. Thoreau is an inspiring radical voice for personal change and social reform, yet he is, at the same time, extremely self-centered and highly skeptical about the capacity of readers and audiences to bring about the transformations that he advocates.     

The ‘Hows’, not the ‘Whys’ or the ‘Wherefores’: The Role of Intra‐party Competition in the 2011 Breakthrough of the True Finns

From minor party status, the True Finn Party (PS) claimed nearly one‐fifth of the vote and almost the same proportion of parliamentary seats at the April 2011 Finnish general election. It registered the largest gains made by any party in postwar Finnish history, thus writing – in the eyes of foreign journalists at least – yet another chapter in the surge of populist radical right parties across contemporary Europe. This article, however, is concerned more with how the substantial PS vote was mobilised than with how much was mobilised. The idea is not to identify the primary causes of the PS's national breakthrough, but to explore the internal dynamics of party's explosive growth and the process of translating a large prospective vote into ‘hard votes’ through the ballot boxes. The focus is on district‐level nomination strategies, the range of candidate types, the mechanics of vote optimisation and the distribution of the personal vote. With regard to the latter, the article seeks to measure and analyse the role of intra‐party competition in the anatomy of party transformation and to do so by the novel means of adapting the Laakso‐Taagepera index to measure the ‘effective number of co‐partisans’. Significantly, at the 2011 Eduskunta election the PS exhibited the highest level of intra‐party competition of any of the eight parliamentary parties.     

Testing the School‐to‐Prison Pipeline

The School‐to‐Prison Pipeline is a social phenomenon where students become formally involved with the criminal justice system as a result of school policies that use law enforcement, rather than discipline, to address behavioral problems. A potentially important part of the School‐to‐Prison Pipeline is the use of sworn School Resource Officers (SROs), but there is little research on the causal effect of hiring these officers on school crime or arrests. Using credibly exogenous variation in the use of SROs generated by federal hiring grants specifically to place law enforcement in schools, I find evidence that law enforcement agencies learn about more crimes in schools upon receipt of a grant, and are more likely to make arrests for those crimes. This primarily affects children under the age of 15. However, I also find evidence that SROs increase school safety, and help law enforcement agencies make arrests for drug crimes occurring on and off school grounds.     

Allen C. Guelzo, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Redeeming the Great Emancipator</Emphasis>

In the latest of his many books on Lincoln, Allen C. Guelzo argues that the “redeemer president” is himself in need of redemption—redemption from a contemporary mindset that refuses to acknowledge moral indebtedness. Challenging various falsifications of the past, from the neo-abolitionist claim of “self emancipation” to simplistic accounts of the postwar failure of emancipation, Guelzo offers a richly textured and fearless brief for Lincoln’s crucial role in emancipation.     

"Europe of the Regions" and the Federalization of Europe

There is a close connection between regionalism, federalism,and the movement to create a united federal Europe. The recentmovement to create a "Europe of the Regions" is one expressionof these connections. However, there are many kinds of regions,and certain forms of regional policy that may not necessarilybe an expression of either regionalism or European federalism.It might be said, nevertheless, that a "Europe of the Regions"is emerging in the weaker sense that, in today s Europe, significantchanges are taking place in the nature and functions of thenation-state. These changes are providing new opportunitiesfor regions to become more important policy actors in a widerEuropean context. The nation-state, however, is unlikely todisappear.     

The ‘Othering’ of ‘Red Ed’, or How the Daily Mail ‘Framed’ the British Labour Leader

This article takes as its starting point the attack on the late Ralph Miliband, the left‐wing intellectual and father of the current Labour leader Ed Miliband, by the Daily Mail in late 2013. It argues that this attack was a response by the Mail to its failed campaign to dub the Labour leader ‘Red Ed’. The article demonstrates that ever since Miliband won the Labour leadership in 2009, the Mail has sought to ‘other’ him by presenting him as ‘alien’—this by constant references to his Jewish background, his upbringing in a wealthy North London intellectual milieu, his supposed extreme left‐wing views and his ineffable ‘oddness’—at least, an oddness as characterised by the newspaper. The paper will conclude by asking why the Daily Mail's ‘Red Ed’ moniker failed to catch on, while noting that their ‘Odd Ed’ moniker seems to have had more resonance.