It’s a great question. I looked into it a few weeks ago:
In the current political praxis of the United States, there are various workarounds that the government can pursue in order to take illegal or unconstitutional actions. Examples of such actions that previous administrations have taken include keeping prisoners in Guantanamo Bay in order to delay habeas corpus petitions, conditioning highway funding to force state compliance, and torturing the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution to regulate local matters. The point is that the US has some constitutional guarantees, but the mechanisms to protect the citizens from the government are imperfect and typically involve slow remedies. And requiring federal employees to defer to the President’s interpretation of the law—presumably when they believe that the administration is doing something illegal—weakens those checks and balances.
A bit of a tangent in the current context, but I have slight issues with your framing here: mechanisms that prevent the federal government telling the state governments what to do are not necessarily mechanisms that protect individuals citizens, although they could be. But equally, if the federal government is more inclined to protect the rights of individual citizens than the state government is, then they are the opposite. And sometimes framing it in terms of individual rights is just the wrong way to think about it: i.e. if the federal government wants some economic regulation and the state government doesn’t, and the regulation has complex costs and benefits that work out well for some citizens and badly for others, then “is it the feds or the state government protecting citizen’s rights” might not be a particularly helpful framing.
This isn’t just abstract, historically in the South, it was often the feds who wanted to protect Black citizens and the state governments who wanted to avoid this under the banner of state’s rights.
This isn’t just abstract, historically in the South, it was often the feds who wanted to protect Black citizens and the state governments who wanted to avoid this under the banner of state’s rights.
This is exactly what I was thinking about. I thought this was the reason why the civil rights movement was heavily reliant on the constitutional amendments passed during Reconstruction.
What is your point? In this case Congress is showing no interest in AI regulation and is heavily lobbied by AI labs and related defense contractors, but state legislatures can act as a check on this, as the federalist system intended.
In animal welfare, federal preemption is usually about powerful lobbies (animal ag, pesticides) wanting control and having more influence at the federal level. That’s the closer analogy in this case— AI company lobbies want to have a bottleneck they control. If Congress passes federal AI regulation, it can always preempt state-level regulation. What that provision says is states can’t regulate AI and there’s no federal proposal for doing so instead.
That has nothing to do with this? The federal government has a right to pass laws at the federal level to preempt state levels laws. There’s a procedural problem with this one (violates Byrd Rule) but we are asking people to tell their Senators they oppose it because of the content.
It is the commerce clause interpretation that gives the federal government the right to regulate in this fashion. (Though I would point to Wickard v. Filburn as being the key case, rather than Gonzales v. Raich). The federal government doesn’t have the right to do whatever it likes, it has certain enumerated constitutional powers—Wickard v Filburn and a couple of similar cases are where they decided to interpret those enumerated powers very broadly and give themselves the almost unlimited power they have today.
I agree the discussion of Guantanamo is a distraction.
There’s nothing special going on here— higher levels of government prevail if laws at two different levels conflict. The federal government has the right to regulate AI in a way that preempts state level governance: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/preemption
We are asking people to tell their Senators not to allow this provision to pass because it means choking out the best hope for AI regulation given Congress’s lack of interest/heavy AI industry lobbying. It’s not offering any federal level regulation— just making it so the states can’t implement any of their own.
It doesn’t seem like the current administration cares about legality or anything, but I’m guessing that the Commerce Clause broadly empowers the US Congress (i.e; the US “Parliament”) to regulate at the federal level anything that ‘impacts’ inter-state commerce in any way. But apparently this AI provision runs afoul of the “Byrd rule” in this specific instance, because regulating AI is not part of the budget reconciliation process and therefore cannot be a part of a budget bill.
I’m guessing that the legalese doesn’t really matter, this is just a banally routine way to provoke political theater so that Republicans can claim that Democrats are holding up the budget bill and paralyzing the country and/or distract from the controversy on Medicaid healthcare budget cuts.
There’s nothing special going on here— higher levels of government prevail if laws at two different levels conflict. The federal government has the right to regulate AI in a way that preempts state level governance: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/preemption
We are asking people to tell their Senators not to allow this provision to pass because it means choking out the best hope for AI regulation given Congress’s lack of interest/heavy AI industry lobbying. It’s not offering any federal level regulation— just making it so the states can’t implement any of their own.
To me it seems like the natural answer is the supremacy clause. The Wikipedia article on federal preemption lists this as the constitutional basis. Seems relatively buttoned up. I also don’t think this is anything unique to AI, my impression is “preemption” is a well understood thing that, its not some new crazy thing being done for the first time here.
Non-American here: how is this constitutional? Isn’t the whole point of US federalism to not allow that kind of law to exist?
It’s a great question. I looked into it a few weeks ago:
via Sentinel minutes.
A bit of a tangent in the current context, but I have slight issues with your framing here: mechanisms that prevent the federal government telling the state governments what to do are not necessarily mechanisms that protect individuals citizens, although they could be. But equally, if the federal government is more inclined to protect the rights of individual citizens than the state government is, then they are the opposite. And sometimes framing it in terms of individual rights is just the wrong way to think about it: i.e. if the federal government wants some economic regulation and the state government doesn’t, and the regulation has complex costs and benefits that work out well for some citizens and badly for others, then “is it the feds or the state government protecting citizen’s rights” might not be a particularly helpful framing.
This isn’t just abstract, historically in the South, it was often the feds who wanted to protect Black citizens and the state governments who wanted to avoid this under the banner of state’s rights.
Agree that the framing is imperfect but as you say your point is a tangent
This is exactly what I was thinking about. I thought this was the reason why the civil rights movement was heavily reliant on the constitutional amendments passed during Reconstruction.
What is your point? In this case Congress is showing no interest in AI regulation and is heavily lobbied by AI labs and related defense contractors, but state legislatures can act as a check on this, as the federalist system intended.
I agree that emphasizing the virtues of federallism is good in general and also in this particular case :)
Who framed it in terms of individual rights?
In animal welfare, federal preemption is usually about powerful lobbies (animal ag, pesticides) wanting control and having more influence at the federal level. That’s the closer analogy in this case— AI company lobbies want to have a bottleneck they control. If Congress passes federal AI regulation, it can always preempt state-level regulation. What that provision says is states can’t regulate AI and there’s no federal proposal for doing so instead.
“Who framed it in terms of individual rights?”
Nuno did. I’m not criticizing you or suggesting this legislation is other than bad.
That has nothing to do with this? The federal government has a right to pass laws at the federal level to preempt state levels laws. There’s a procedural problem with this one (violates Byrd Rule) but we are asking people to tell their Senators they oppose it because of the content.
It is the commerce clause interpretation that gives the federal government the right to regulate in this fashion. (Though I would point to Wickard v. Filburn as being the key case, rather than Gonzales v. Raich). The federal government doesn’t have the right to do whatever it likes, it has certain enumerated constitutional powers—Wickard v Filburn and a couple of similar cases are where they decided to interpret those enumerated powers very broadly and give themselves the almost unlimited power they have today.
I agree the discussion of Guantanamo is a distraction.
There’s nothing special going on here— higher levels of government prevail if laws at two different levels conflict. The federal government has the right to regulate AI in a way that preempts state level governance: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/preemption
We are asking people to tell their Senators not to allow this provision to pass because it means choking out the best hope for AI regulation given Congress’s lack of interest/heavy AI industry lobbying. It’s not offering any federal level regulation— just making it so the states can’t implement any of their own.
It doesn’t seem like the current administration cares about legality or anything, but I’m guessing that the Commerce Clause broadly empowers the US Congress (i.e; the US “Parliament”) to regulate at the federal level anything that ‘impacts’ inter-state commerce in any way. But apparently this AI provision runs afoul of the “Byrd rule” in this specific instance, because regulating AI is not part of the budget reconciliation process and therefore cannot be a part of a budget bill.
I’m guessing that the legalese doesn’t really matter, this is just a banally routine way to provoke political theater so that Republicans can claim that Democrats are holding up the budget bill and paralyzing the country and/or distract from the controversy on Medicaid healthcare budget cuts.
There’s nothing special going on here— higher levels of government prevail if laws at two different levels conflict. The federal government has the right to regulate AI in a way that preempts state level governance: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/preemption
We are asking people to tell their Senators not to allow this provision to pass because it means choking out the best hope for AI regulation given Congress’s lack of interest/heavy AI industry lobbying. It’s not offering any federal level regulation— just making it so the states can’t implement any of their own.
To me it seems like the natural answer is the supremacy clause. The Wikipedia article on federal preemption lists this as the constitutional basis. Seems relatively buttoned up. I also don’t think this is anything unique to AI, my impression is “preemption” is a well understood thing that, its not some new crazy thing being done for the first time here.