Law Commons^™

Unfunded Mandates And Fiscal Federalism: A Critique, Robert W. Adler

Vanderbilt Law Review

The term "unfunded federal mandates" is used to challenge federal obligations imposed on states and localities without accompanying funding. Unfunded mandates were alluded to by both the majority and dissenting opinions in Printz v. United States, in which provisions of the Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act were invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tenth Amendment grounds. In this Article, Professor Adler critiques the fiscal, legal, and policy arguments against unfunded federal mandates. This analysis, in turn, raises two broader issues. First, is the concept of unfunded mandates independently useful to the nation's ongoing debate about federal- ism? Second, does …