Colorado Law is proud to announce that Professor Pierre Schlag is the winner of the 2024 Jules Milstein Scholarship Award for his book Twilight of The American State. The book, published by the University of Michigan Press, offers a sweeping exploration of the American state as seen through law. 听He abjures describing it through the conventional constitutional categories鈥攕eparation of powers, federalism, judicial review, or even more abstract concepts such as liberal democracy. 听听听听
鈥淚ndeed,鈥� Schlag says, 鈥減erhaps the single most important take-away [from this book] is that we should stop viewing the United States as merely or mostly a liberal democracy. The United States has other aspects of governance that are every bit as important as liberal democracy. Thus the U.S. is also a bureaucratic state pervasively involved in what might be called administration.鈥� 听听
And he adds, the U.S. is also a neoliberal state whose public institutions and discourse have been colonized by private interests. Competition itself among private firms is now focused not simply on production or promotion of a product or service, but also on securing special government dispensations, waivers, exemptions, subsidies, protective legislation, and enduring state entanglements. 听听
鈥淐ompetition now compels firms to be in the lobbying business, the rent-seeking business, the leveraging-through-law business,鈥� Schlag explains. 听鈥淪ome of this, of course, is not new. 听What is new is the magnitude and pervasiveness of these arrangements and the fact that these arrangements have themselves become institutionalized aspects of the state and the ways in which the state operates. We ought to be looking at all this more deeply,鈥� 听听
Schlag says that the three contemporaneous iterations of the state鈥攍iberal democratic, bureaucratic, and neoliberal鈥攁re three different variants, each with its own logic, discourse, and, most important, its own law. 听The resulting conflicts and contradictions among the different variants result in erratic and even incoherent legal regimes鈥攊ronically, provoking or triggering similar reactive responses among the people. 听听
Schlag is quick to point out that law is by no means the only or even the primary factor in all this, but it is a factor. He shared that, for him, this pattern served both as an impetus and an occasion to explore the multiple variants of the American state. 听
This is one of the few times that he has done such 鈥渂ig-picture鈥� work. 听
鈥淚t鈥檚 a bit of new line for me,鈥� he said. 鈥淭wilight of the American State does not build directly off any of my previous projects.鈥� 听听
Speaking of the Milstein Prize, Schlag said, "I am extremely grateful that people on our faculty found this work worthy of the Award. 听Our faculty is extremely diverse in its intellectual and professional interests, its scholarly methodologies and research agendas. 听It speaks well of Colorado Law that it enables and values such a wide variety of approaches.鈥澨�
The Jules Milstein Scholarship Award is presented each year to a Colorado Law faculty member for a substantial published work that best demonstrates excellence in legal scholarship. Congratulations again, Professor Schlag, on this achievement!听
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