The Rules of Everyday Life

The author argues that the rules prescribing and proscribing our daily conduct have, in the last two centuries, become increasingly federal in origin. He argues that the paradigms that sought to separate national from local concerns were directed at federal power and not at the nature of rules. Moreover, he suggests that the paradigms developed for separating what was a purely local concern from what was a concern fit for federal regulation were too abstract and had no rigor in separating federal lawmaking from intrusions into matters that should be left to the states. He suggests that in addition to consideration of institutional competencies and economic costs, attention be given to ethical theory, especially to recognition of community conceptions of the good and to the autonomy of communities and individuals in choosing the conceptions that govern them.