When states sue the federal government [rebroadcast]

**Jenna Spinelli** (0:00)
Hi everyone, this is Jenna Spinelli from the Democracy Works team. While we take a holiday break, we are going back into the archives to re-broadcast a few episodes that you might have missed earlier this year. This week's episode with Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro originally aired in October.

**Michael Berkman** (0:22)
From the McCourt Institute for Democracy on the campus of Penn State University, I'm Michael Berkman.

**Chris Beam** (0:28)
And I'm Chris Beam, and this is Democracy Works.

**Michael Berkman** (0:31)
Chris, today we have a special guest, Josh Shapiro, the Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was in state college last weekend, and we got a chance to sit down and talk with him about federalism and being Attorney General.

**Chris Beam** (0:44)
Right, so, you know, I think most of our listeners will recognize that, because Josh Shapiro has been in the news a lot lately, he brought forward the Grand Jury Report on sexual abuse among priests in the Catholic Church, and this was an incredibly important moment. It led to his communication with the Pope and a number of other states bringing similar charges, and he got interviewed by the New York Times, and yet he's still willing to talk to us. But the point is that he's, that we, you know, this is all incredibly interesting and important, but it's not our subject, and it's not why we wanted to talk to him.

**Michael Berkman** (1:27)
We wanted to talk to him about federalism.

**Chris Beam** (1:28)
Right. And so the tag, the important role that state's attorney general's, attorney's general play, I always get that wrong, is to act on the part of states to constrain and act as a check on federal power.

**Michael Berkman** (1:48)
Right. Like so much else that we talk about, this goes back to Madison and the Federalist Papers.

**Chris Beam** (1:55)
Of happy memory, right?

**Michael Berkman** (1:58)
Well, I just taught them last week, so they are really in my memory. And in particular, Federalist 51, where Madison talks about, quote, the double security that arises to the rights of the people. The governments will control each other at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.

**Chris Beam** (2:13)
Right.

**Michael Berkman** (2:14)
And like so much else in the design of the Constitution, the intent here is to put protections for the people by limiting government power. And in this case, it's that we have the state governments that have certain powers that are not under the federal government.
They are independent sovereignty. Right.

**Chris Beam** (2:35)
And since we're doing this AP class, we might as well also mention that the 10th Amendment to the Constitution says that all rights not articulated to the federal government belong to the state.

**Michael Berkman** (2:48)
Right. What we will talk to the Attorney General about and our lawsuits that he's involved in against federal government actions of different types, of which there have been many high profile since the Trump administration in particular. But this predates the Trump administration. This is not something just about that.
You know, if you go back to think about how did Ted Cruz become Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz was the Solicitor General in Texas, working with an Attorney General by the name of Greg Abbott, who took the lead on many lawsuits against the Obama administration, having to do with a range of issues, including the Affordable Care Act, abortion rights, just all kinds of things, where they would bring suit against these acts, and they would get other states involved. They would submit amicus briefs to the court. Ted Cruz testified multiple times, not testified, but was before the Supreme Court multiple times, arguing some of these cases. This is something that happens throughout different administrations, but it is very much a partisan kind of issue. Not exclusively, but very much a partisan kind of issue, where Attorney Generals use their ability to bring suits to challenge what the federal government is doing. Within the Trump administration, I think the most high-profile that many people knew about was how the state of Washington, and I believe Pennsylvania was involved in this too, were able to stop the initial executive order prohibiting emigration from certain countries.

**Chris Beam** (4:19)
So, Jenna, we were able to get just a few moments of the Attorney General's time. He happened to be in state college, and he was kind enough to spend some time with Jenna.
So, it's a little different recording. He's not in studio, but we just still jumped on it. We felt like it was such a huge opportunity.

**Michael Berkman** (4:40)
Well, let's go to Jenna and the Attorney General.