So what power shifts have we had lately in the American government?

Well, what with routinizing the 3/5 majority requirement in the Senate, House obstructionism, stonewalling judicial appointments, etc., Congress (at least Republican ones) are clearly trying to establish legislative supremacy over the executive.

The government shutdowns of the Gingrich and modern era, and the impeachments of 1998 and (possibly) 2015 can be read as attempts to bootstrap into existence a vote of no confidence and establish a Parliamentary system.

Clever of them and godspeed, but they’re going to have to routinize it enough to the point where they can drop the figleaf of legitimating impeachments as a response to “high crimes and misdemeanors” by puffing up garden-variety scandals because it’s going to be too hard to nail the president and veep at the same time.

Either that or change the line of succession to skip straight from POTUS to Speaker of the House, formalizing the role of VP as a figurehead of state akin to European presidents and monarchs.

Uhh, what else. There’s the gay marriage thing, where various state executives realized they can nullify plebiscites or the legislature’s laws by inviting a friendly challenge and then declining to defend them, though if that keeps up I’d give it maybe 15 years before the judiciary jury-rigs standing doctrine to give *someone* the ability to defend them.

The Roberts Court’s been doing interesting stuff in rolling back campaign finance law to the 1970 status quo and giving states more latitude to massage voter eligibility but I don’t know if that counts. If they undercut Smith v. Allwright and give parties more latitude to set their own eligibility systems for membership and thus primaries, that might shake things up.

Probably something I forgot.

You know you don’t see the pardon power used much anymore. That’s something that’s been striking to me reading up on 19th century European history, how often you’d see general amnesties, that were kind of used for reconciliation after the suppression of an uprising but also seemed to free people jailed for unrelated criminal matters.

One of my favorite toy ideas is for the executive to totally undercut the judiciary by waking up each morning and pardoning everyone charged with contempt of court. People will moot the idea of the legislature end-running the judiciary by jurisdiction stripping, but no one seems to mention my possibility, even though the idea’s been discussed before