Why Has the Separation of Powers Failed?
Despite Korn s flawed application of separation of powers theory, she helps provide answers to an important question for students of modern government, namely, how did we get where we are today? Part of the answer is that the Anti-Federalists were right: for all its value, structure alone does not guarantee that the national government will not encroach upon the States power and individual liberty. Another part of the answer is that the Wilsonian and New Deal reformers partially succeeded in their demand for constitutional amendments that led to greater centralized government. The Sixteenth Amendment (1913), which authorized direct taxation, and the Seventeenth Amendment (1913), which provided for the direct election of U.S. senators, greatly undermined federalism and the separation of powers. The acquiescence of the Supreme Court in the mid-1930s to improper delegations had the same effect. But Korn also answers another part of the riddle of why Congress would give so much power away.
