Federal Preemption States' Powers, National Interests

When does federal law trump state law? The arcane topic of federal preemption has become the stuff of public debate and major news stories. The partisan lines are clearly drawn. On one side, consumer advocates, plaintiffsO attorneys, and state officials argue that broad federal preemption claims interfere with the statesO historic police power to protect their citizens against corporate misconduct. On the other side, corporations and federal agencies maintain that preemption is a vital safeguard against unwarranted and inconsistent state interferences with the national economy and against aggressive trial lawyers and attorneys general. Fierce struggles along these lines dominate the political debate, judicial decisions, and legal commentary in a wide range of regulatory arenas, from financial regulation to automobile safety; from clean air laws to the regulation of telecommunications, energy, and other network industries; from securities law to consumer products standards; from pharmaceutical drugs to pesticides to outboard motors. In all these areas, billions of dollars hang on regulatory nuances and arcane points of legal interpretation. The preemption debate is also being waged in the shadow of broader, sometimes constitutional arguments concerning the role and utility of federalism and OstatesO rightsO in a modern, highly mobile, integrated economy. Legal scholars are sharply divided over both the substance of those arguments and the extent to which they should dominate economic considerations or statutory language. What the preemption debate needs is an examination that reflects the delicate interplay between our constitutional structure and the details of specific regulations. In Federal Preemption: StatesO Powers, National Interests, Richard A. Epstein and Michael S. Greve, two leading scholars in the field of preemption, have assembled an exceptional group of prominent legal scholars and practicing attorneys for a probing analysis and spirited discussion of these difficult issues. The volume includes a preface by Kenneth W. Starr, dean of the Pepperdine University Law School and former solicitor general of the United States, and introductory and concluding essays by the editors. The essays are arranged in three parts. In Part I, Viet Dinh and Stephen Gardbaum trace the antecedents of modern preemption law_ respectively, the nineteenth-century understanding and the transition from the Lochner Court to the New Deal. The New Deal largely settled the constitutional disputes of the earlier eras, but the authors of these essays demonstrate why the preemption debate would benefit from a better understanding of why those disputes were settled and on what terms. The contributors in Part II examine existing preemption law in a wide range of policy arenas: drug regulation (Daniel Troy); telecommunications (Thomas Hazlett); banking, insurance, and corporate law (Hal Scott); environmental policy (Thomas Merrill); and products liability (Samuel Issacharoff and Catherine Sharkey). Jointly and severally, the essays provide both an in-depth examination of preemption at work and a good sense of the awesome range of legal and economic questions that fall under the heading of preemption. Part III returns to the broader questions. Robert Gasaway and Ashley Parrish explore the internal logic of preemption doctrine, and Ernest A. Young examines its federalism dimension. Anne van AakenOs essay contrasts the American understanding of preemption with that of the European Union.Greve, Michael S. is the author of 'Federal Preemption States' Powers, National Interests', published 2007 under ISBN 9780844742540 and ISBN 0844742546.