"The primary structural purpose of the United States Constitution is to empower the federal government to solve problems that the states would need to act collectively to solve, and to prevent the states from undermining these solutions or causing such problems from the perspective of the Constitution or Congress. Any faithful account of what the Constitution is for and how it should be interpreted must include this main structural function. The Constitution was established principally because of the widely recognized failures of its predecessor, the Articles of Confederation, to adequately address "collective-action problems" facing the states, including funding the national government, regulating foreign and interstate commerce, and defending the nation from attack. These challenges are called collective-action problems because the states would need to cooperate or coordinate their behavior-they would need to act collectively, not individually-to solve them, and they would often struggle to do so. In afundamental sense, the U.S. Constitution is the Collective-Action Constitution, and the sobering problems facing America today-including inadequate access to health care, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and future ones, opioid addiction, gun violence, racism and other bigotry, political extremism, unlawful immigration, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation-cannot be adequately dealt with by government if Americans do not recognize this truth. The main goal of the Collective-Action Constitution is not to vindicate a conception of economic efficiency, but to create and maintain political and economic union"--
The United States Constitution was established primarily because of the widely recognized failures of its predecessor, the Articles of Confederation, to adequately address "collective-action problems" facing the states. These problems included funding the national government, regulating foreign and interstate commerce, and defending the nation from attack. Meeting such challenges required the states to cooperate or coordinate their behavior, but they often struggled to do so both inside and outside the Confederation Congress. By empowering Congress to solve collective-action problems, and by creating a national executive and judiciary to enforce federal law, the Constitution promised a substantially more effective federal government.
An important read for scholars, lawyers, judges, and students alike, Neil Siegel's The Collective-Action Constitution addresses how the U.S. Constitution is, in a fundamental sense, the Collective-Action Constitution. Any faithful account of what the Constitution is for and how it should be interpreted must include the primary structural purpose of empowering the federal government to solve collective-action problems for the states and preventing them from causing such problems. This book offers a thorough examination of the collective-action principles animating the structure of the Constitution and how they should be applied to meet many of the most daunting challenges facing American society today.
The Collective-Action Constitution discusses how the U.S. Constitution is based on the principles of collective action among states, and how this understanding can provide guidance on addressing the sobering problems facing America today.
