April, 2020
Washington – The time for states to join together in more interstate compacts, to fight the coronavirus and to preserve our constitutional form of government, is overdue.
I discussed interstate compacts in a post two months ago, along with other options states have to exercise their constitutional sovereignty in times of challenge and crisis. Had the appropriate compacts been in place, states could have avoided competing against each other for supplies to fight Covid-19.
In the earlier post, I suggested that states do not need the approval of Congress in many situations where compacts are extensions of their police powers and do not conflict with the powers of the national government.
A similar view is expressed in an op-ed appearing today in the Washington Post. The leading case on interstate compacts is Virginia v. Tennessee.
The National Governors Association is the organization that could best facilitate new interstate compacts. Some two hundred compacts already exist. They could fill the leadership vacuum that currently exists in the presidency, so as to coordinate national Covid-19 testing and re-open the economy safely.
There is no time like the present to create more compacts, both to fight pandemics and to ensure that our constitutional system of government is preserved beyond today's national emergency.
