[LINK] "The Dismal Failure of Union, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Articles of Conf

[rfmcdonald]

At the conservative/libertarian Volokh Conspiracy, David Post argues that the current flaws of the European Union are the flaws of the Articles of Confederation that preceded the current constitution of the United States, that just as the first American constitution gave too much power to the states and too little to the central government, so is power in the European Union distributed too overwhelmingly to the member-states to deal with the problems facing all Europeans.

As it happened, we had a lecture scheduled that day by Isabella Bufacchi, the financial reporter at one of the daily newspapers in Rome (Il Sole24Ore), on the developing Euro crisis. At her lecture, she starts talking about the fundamental problems, in her opinion, afflicting the structure of the European Union and the Eurozone that have contributed to (and become the focus of attention because of) the current Euro crisis. And damned if her list didn’t look a lot like Hamilton’s list! It was actually quite astonishing – a couple of students asked me afterwards if it had all been planned out that way (it hadn’t). The European Union, too, legislates (primarily) “for STATES or GOVERNMENTS, in their CORPORATE or COLLECTIVE CAPACITIES, as contradistinguished from the INDIVIDUALS of which they consist”; it has no power “to employ the arm of the ordinary magistrate to execute its own resolutions”; there is a “want of SANCTION to its laws”; it has no taxing authority for the purpose of raising its own revenue; on fundamental questions is gives each State equal suffrage; its judiciary power is crabbed and circumscribed; and it has “never had a ratification by the PEOPLE[, r]esting on no better foundation than the consent of the several legislatures.”

It made me think: Perhaps the Europeans who are trying to envision what “Europe” should look like would take comfort from knowing that our first try at Union was a failure, too. And that the Federalist should be better known, and more widely read, in Europe. Europe needs its Publius, right about now: A fresh start; a catalog of the flaws of the current system, and a plan for a new way forward, to be submitted to the people of Europe for them to accept or reject.

I've heard the analogy raised before by people of various nationalities and ideological stances. The analogy sounds plausible enough to me, but I lack the background in American history to feel comfortable making any definitive conclusions. Does Post's argument make sense?