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Full-Text Articles in Law
Defending A Mixed Economy, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Defending A Mixed Economy, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
This essay reviews Jacob S. Hacker's and Paul Pierson's very engaging book, American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget what Made America Prosper (2016).
Is Government Really Broken?, Cary Coglianese
Is Government Really Broken?, Cary Coglianese
University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Public Affairs
The widespread public angst that surfaced around the 2016 presidential election in the United States revealed that many Americans believe their government has become badly broken. Given the serious problems that continue to persist in society—crime, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, discrimination, and more—these beliefs in a government breakdown are understandable. Yet a breakdown is actually far from self-evident. In this paper, I explain how diagnoses of governmental performance depend on the perspective from which current conditions in the country are viewed. Certainly when judged against a standard of perfection, America has a long way to go. But perfection is no meaningful …