Nearly five decades have passed since Congress’s last comprehensive reform of the maze of federal statutes that govern our country’s response to a national emergency. As the senators who led that effort explained, “American political theory of emergency government was derived and enlarged from John Locke, the English political-philosopher, [who] argued that the threat of national crisis—unforeseen, sudden, and potentially catastrophic—required the creation of broad executive emergency powers to be exercised by the Chief Executive.”
While that assessment is certainly correct, the Englishman’s theory maps imperfectly onto America’s federal system of government, which has not just one chief executive, the president, but also 50 state governors. After the present crisis has abated, the time is ripe for Congress to undertake another sweeping examination of the federal statutes relating to a national emergency.
