&quot;The 2 for 1 regulations EO&quot;: how much is the executive branch allowed to legislate? This is a very broad question (and one that will change over the next few weeks and months when the administration and congress weigh in), and could be overly subject to opinion. But: is this new Executive Order really legislation from the Executive branch that is not allowed to legislate? And/or is this "meta-legislation"? And does that matter? President Trump signed an order Monday aimed at cutting regulations on businesses, saying that agencies should eliminate at least two regulations for each new one. The White House later released the text of the order, which added that the cost of any new regulation should be offset by eliminating regulations with the same costs to businesses. It excluded regulations regarding the military. Trump wants to scrap two regulations for each new one adopted - The Washington Post Could Congress reverse it with their own legislation?
An executive order is a way of memorializing in writing Presidential authority that is either expressly granted to the President by the constitution or statute, or is left to President by implication either from a lack of guidance or as a result of the structure of the constitution and historical precedent. Congress has wide discretion to legislate in a manner that limits the power to make executive orders and pass regulations, and can mandate that the administration issue regulations in a certain area or refrain from issuing regulations in a certain area where the Executive branch is denied discretion or denied the right to set overarching policies as opposed to deciding things on a case by case basis at a lower level in the bureaucracy. In principle, Congress could so micromanage the executive branch that it would be unconstitutional, but that is basically a hypothetical concept with no meaningfully well defined boundaries. The hard cases involve grants of regulatory authority subject to further approval by a subpart of Congress like a committee, as opposed to a full fledged act of law (something called a "legislative veto") which has dubious constitutional status despite being common. The main "meta-legislation" governing regulations in general in the federal government is the Administrative Procedures Act. Subject to the limitations imposed by Congress, a President can take any approach desired to making and changing regulations, but the APA does impose meaningful limits, in particular, on how and how fast, existing regulations can be changed, which may make it hard to eliminate two regulations for each new one that the administration wants to pass or is mandated by Congress to adopt to implement statutes it has passed. But, because a "regulation" is not a meaningfully defined unit, it is a pretty meaningless edict. You can satisfy it simply by cramming two sections of a bunch of regulations into one, essentially reformatting it for political cosmetics rather than making substantive changes, or by incorporating something else by reference. So, the 2 for 1 EO is basically an aspirational statement of policy and attitude more than it is a meaningful constraint. No one could sue the administration or invalidate a regulation it passed because it didn't comply with this EO.
Perhaps. The relevant law is assembled into notes on 3 USC 102. The original act of 1963 defines President-elect in this manner: (c) The terms 'President-elect' and 'Vice-President-elect' as used in this Act shall mean such persons as are the apparent successful candidates for the office of President and Vice President, respectively, as ascertained by the Administrator following the general elections held to determine the electors of President and Vice President in accordance with title 3, United States Code, sections 1 and 2. There is no specific statutory provision directing the Administrator of the GSA to ascertain who is that President-Elect. The administration is apparently taking a position similar to that taken by the Clinton administration, that states determine who has been elected, and the states have not officially determined who has been elected: nor has a candidate conceded. If a court orders the Administrator to make the ascertainment, I expect that the administration would appeal the ruling up to the Supreme Court. This letter, addressed to the Administrator, gives the legal rationale.
Why do you want to know? I think that the reason this question seems so obscure is because it does not involve sufficient context and specificity. It can't be answered until one knows the reason that it matters to know if a rule is new or not. In a particular context, these questions usually have obvious and clear answers. The murkiness arises only when one tries to overgeneralize. The life of law is not reason, it is experience. In general, it is almost never fruitful to try to apply legal principles of any kind to their logical conclusion without grounding that logic in fact specific and context specific precedents and applications. That approach to legal reasoning is a classic rookie mistake that gets a lot of young associate attorneys doing legal research into trouble by overstating the confidence that they should have in their conclusions when there is no case right on point addressing a situation. For example, if a federal government agency publishes something in the federal register that does not exactly restate an existing regulation, then it is a rule change, in the narrow sense that is changes an existing published narrowly defined Code of Federal Regulations rule. The process by which one does so derives from the Administrative Procedures Act and other authorizing legislation passed by Congress and also custom and case law interpreting these, so it isn't self-referential. A completely different context in which the question of whether there is a "new rule" of law is when a court according to the principles of stare decisis makes a ruling interpreting the constitution in a manner different from or expanding upon previously rulings interpreting the constitution in a similar circumstance. In this context, this matters because a "new rule" of constitutional law is generally given only prospective effect, while an interpretation of an existing rule of law that merely expands upon existing precedents in a foreseeable way has retroactive effect. In this situation, as in any case in which one tries to determine the best definition to apply under the law, the best approach is to look for a definition that produces just results given the consequences of a particular definition v. another particular definition. In that context, the determination of whether a rule is a "new rule" should depend upon foreseeability and the amount of reliance that people put on the old rule as opposed to the new rule being in force. There is no good reason to have transsubstantive legal meta-rules that apply to both of these situations. The former mechanistic rule makes sense in its context and makes the status quo clear and the events that constitute a change in the rule clear, while the latter consequence oriented definition makes sense in the completely different context where it is used. Surely, there are other contexts in which the question of what constitutes a "new rule" could have different consequences still. For example, to determine what constitutes a new v. old rule of U.S. Senate procedure, or to determine which statute is newer or older for purposes of determining which statute of two that conflict should be given effect when there was a cosmetic recodification of the section numbers of one of the titles but not the other without changing the substantive meaning of the recodified statute. The determination should generally be made on a case by case basis as there is no important purpose served by having a uniform metarule to answer these questions. If you are getting paradoxes trying to apply your legal theory, you are probably doing it wrong. For what it is worth, I have a dim opinion of Hart as someone who uses lots of words to say nothing of consequence or use, and I am not familiar with Biagoli or Suber. In general, legal theorists are not terribly influential in how the law is applied and interpreted in practice, although, of course, there are always exceptions.
Generally, the legislature is not restricted to passing laws that are a good idea. This has been remarked on by the Supreme Court (in Justice Stevens's concurrence, emphasis added): But as I recall my esteemed former colleague, Thurgood Marshall, remarking on numerous occasions: “The Constitution does not prohibit legislatures from enacting stupid laws.” There are some limits: for one thing, the law must pass the rational basis test, which, while extremely favorable to the legislature (Congress could probably ban coffee consumption, for instance), does impose some limits and might result in at least some of your examples being struck down—I cannot imagine a court finding that the government had a rational basis for taxing everyone 120% of their income, for example. However, the states do have a recourse in many cases, especially if Congress were to reduce the penalties for crimes: most &quot;common&quot; crimes (assault, battery, murder, theft, etc.) are state crimes, so Congress wouldn't have the power to change the penalties for those. Most cases where these things become federal crimes involve conduct affecting multiple states, and the person committing the crime would likely also commit at least one state crime. States also aren't required to assist the federal government in its enforcement of federal law. For instance, quite a number of states believe that the federal prohibition of marijuana is unjust, and won't enforce those laws within their boundaries.
You have misread the DMLP page. In Pennsylvania, it is illegal to record a conversation if you are a party and if the other party does not consent. The fact that federal law doesn't ban something doesn't mean that states can't ban it. There is generally a presumption that when both the feds and the states can legitimately regulate something, the feds weren't trying to preempt all state laws on the topic. While people often say "federal law takes precedence over state law," the normal rule is that both laws apply; the federal law only blocks the state law if the feds wanted to block said state laws. So far as I can tell, the federal law has never been held to preempt two-party consent laws; the point of the federal law was to restrict recording, not extend it. It's like how federal law doesn't prohibit taking hostages inside the US to coerce a private company into doing what you want (anti-terrorism laws might, I guess, but the federal hostage-taking law doesn't); while the federal law excludes most hostage-taking in the US, that doesn't mean that it's legal to take hostages. Congress sometimes wants to establish nationwide standards for something, but the presumption is that they didn't.
The Constitution only regulates the powers of the government; it doesn't directly say what the people can and can't do. In particular, it doesn't say directly that nobody except Congress can coin money. However, it does give the government the power to make laws, which are binding on the population. So Congress possibly could make a law forbidding cryptocurrencies, or at least regulating them, under the "regulating the value thereof" clause. However, they haven't done so. In the case of the Liberty Dollar, there are some specific laws that apply. They were convicted of violating 18 USC 485, which forbids the making of physical gold or silver coins that resemble US or foreign money, and 18 USC 486, which forbids creating or passing any physical metal coins as money (as well as other conspiracy charges, aiding and abetting, etc). None of these laws apply to cryptocurrency because they are not physical metal coins. Given that Congress has been explicitly given the power to coin and regulate the value of money in the United States, how are cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Basis created, distributed, and redeemed such that they have not been found unconstitutional? The power to regulate includes the power to not regulate. As a slight tangent, what laws allow for the creation and distribution of cryptocurrencies? In a free society, "everything is permitted that is not forbidden". We don't need a law specifically allowing the creation and distribution of cryptocurrencies; it's sufficient that there is no law that forbids it.
Sending a letter to the Governor is legal You can do it, I can do it and the elected officials of Lancaster County can do it. Thanks to the first amendment, that letter can say pretty much anything you like subject to limits that themselves are subject to strict scrutiny - things like threats and defamation. Outlining a course of action that you propose to take is legal even if that course of action is itself illegal. I will also point out that people - sometimes even politicians - have been known to say things they don't mean. However, that just begs the question ... This article explains what's going on and, more importantly, the actual letter is here. I've read it. Twice. I can't see where the county proposes to do anything concrete that might be considered illegal. Apart from the first paragraph, the entire letter appears to be a case for why the county should be permitted to move from red to yellow on May 15 and they are asking for the Governor's support. Even the first paragraph is ambiguous; while it asks the Governor to move the county from "red" to "yellow" and states that they "intend to move forward with a plan" it is by no means clear that that plan is moving from "red" to "yellow" even though you could get that impression on a casual reading. Basically, what they intend to do is so vague that it's impossible to tell if it's legal or not. Of course, just because something is illegal doesn't mean it can't be done. The USA is a free country and the fundamental freedom is to reap the consequences of your actions. If the county does something1 then the state can take them to court - the court will decide if it's legal or not. 1 Or threatens to do something sufficiently concrete that an injunction against it could be issued.
This is known as a retroactive or ex post facto law. Such laws are explicitly forbidden by the US Constitution (Wikipedia reference), and are generally frowned on in jurisdictions where the rule of law applies, partly because it is difficult to prove criminal intent when your action was not at the time criminal.