American Democracy in Context. Joseph A. Pika

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СКАЧАТЬ of thousands of families to abandon their farms and relocate. In all, it is estimated that as many as two million people were left homeless by the Dust Bowl.^a

^a The Dust Bowl, directed by Ken Burns (2012, Washington, DC: Florentine Films), http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/about/overview/

Suppose you were one of these impoverished farmers who lost everything and went looking for a better life elsewhere. No matter what state you came from, you would have been derisively dubbed an “Okie” (because so many of the migrants came from Oklahoma). Let’s assume you chose to go to California (a particularly popular destination in those days). Would you worry about California letting you in? Probably not, since today, we take it for granted that states cannot prohibit the entry of citizens from other states. But worry you should. Overwhelmed by the tremendous influx of impoverished people from other states, California reacted by trying to keep out their fellow Americans. There, you and your fellow Okies would have been marginalized as “‘criminals,’ ‘troublemakers,’ ‘parasites,’ ‘enemies of society,’ or, even worse, ‘radicals’”—even if you had been a prosperous pillar of your community before the Dust Bowl destroyed your farm.^b

^b Thomas Conner, “The Anti-Okie Panic,” This Land, November 10, 2016, http://thislandpress.com/2016/11/10/the-anti-okie-panic/

Had you arrived at the California border in 1936, you would likely have been rudely turned away by armed officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). The LAPD Police Chief, James Edgar (“Two-Gun”) Davis, deployed 136 of his officers to 16 major points of entry into California to block the migrant caravan. Had you somehow gotten into the state, Davis—who once said that constitutional rights only benefited “crooks and criminals”—would have threatened you with arrest and a 180-day jail term with hard labor.^c No one in California seems to have suggested building a wall at that time, but some might have welcomed it. In the spring of 1936, the San Francisco News commissioned John Steinbeck to write a series of articles about the plight of these migrants. Published in October 1936 as “The Harvest Gypsies,” they led to Steinbeck’s classic 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath.

^c Cecilia Rasmussen, “LAPD Blocked Dust Bowl Migrants at State Borders,” Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2003, http://articles.latimes.com/2003/mar/09/local/me-then9

      Then, in 1937, California passed legislation that criminalized bringing or helping to bring indigent people into the state. Thus, if you had friends or family in California who brought you into the state, they could have been punished, too. That is precisely what happened to a California resident named Edwards. He drove to Texas in 1940 and brought back to California his wife’s brother, who was unemployed. For this act of charity, Edwards was tried, convicted, and given a six-month suspended jail sentence.

Is that constitutional? Existing Supreme Court precedent at the time suggested that the California law used to convict Edwards could, indeed, be a valid exercise of California’s police power. In an 1837 case, Mayor of the City of New York v. Miln, the Court concluded that it is “as necessary for a State to provide precautionary measures against the moral pestilence of paupers, vagabonds, and possibly convicts as it is to guard against the physical pestilence, which may arise from unsound and infectious articles imported.”^d

^d Mayor of the City of New York v. Miln, 36 U.S. 102 (1837) at 142.

Edwards, however, appealed his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court. There, despite the earlier ruling in Miln, he won—thanks, in no small part, to the Court’s 1937 “switch in time” that led to its more expansive cooperative federalist reading of the commerce clause. In a unanimous decision in Edwards v. California (1941), the Supreme Court concluded that the law imposed an unconstitutional burden upon interstate commerce. In so doing, the Court also explicitly rejected the language of Miln: “Whatever may have been the notion then prevailing, we do not think that it will now be seriously contended that, because a person is without employment and without funds, he constitutes a ‘moral pestilence.’ Poverty and immorality are not synonymous.”^e

^e Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160 (1941) at 177.

      Questions to Consider

      1 Suppose you had lost your farm and had traveled to California in the 1930s in search of a better life. What would you have done if confronted by the LAPD at the border, or if a friend or relative of yours had been charged under the California law for helping you come to the state?

      2 What are the similarities and differences between California’s effort to secure its borders with Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon in the 1930s and today’s efforts to secure the southern border between the United States and Mexico?

      3 Is there ever an instance in which a state might be justified in using its police powers to exclude someone from entering the state? If not, why? If so, when?

      4 It is easy to dismiss Mayor of the City of New York v. Miln and the 1937 California law as relics of their time. But what about more recent anti-vagrancy statutes enacted by some cities to counter their burgeoning homeless populations? Are they problematic?

      The New Federalism and Beyond

      After the federal expansion of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society (1964–1969), Republican president Richard Nixon (1969–1974) sought to shift some of the balance of power back to the states. President Nixon coined the phrase New Federalism to describe this new approach.

      The New Federalism

      One of the ways New Federalism tried to restore power to the states was by implementing the use of block grants to states. Unlike specifically targeted categorical grants, where the federal government tells states precisely how and where to spend funds, block grants give states more flexibility. Block grants are meant to be spent on some general area, such as education or transportation, but states are relatively free to spend the money as they wish within that broad parameter.

      President Nixon proposed consolidating 129 different categorical grants into six block grants. Congress stymied this initial proposal but did begin to create some new block grants. President Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) had more success. At his urging, Congress consolidated 77 categorical grants into nine block grants in 1981. The move may have given more flexibility to the states in terms of how to spend the money, but states ended up with less money to spend as a result of the consolidation. Another expansion of block grants took place in 1996 when Democrat Bill Clinton (1993–2001) held the White House and Republicans controlled Congress.⁴⁶

      In his 1996 State of the Union Address, President Clinton famously stated, “The era of big government is over.” He added, however, that “we cannot go back to the time when citizens were left to fend for themselves.” Instead, he envisioned a leaner federal government working in partnership with state and local governments, as well as with religious, charitable, СКАЧАТЬ