Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously called our nation’s states the “laboratories of democracy.” He wrote in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann that a “state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”
President Trump is taking this approach with the Covid-19 crisis, allowing state governors, who are closer to the situation in their individual states, to decide what is right for their constituents. This is both wise, and politically expedient, as the blame for a too-early, insufficiently cautious opening of the economy then falls on the governor, not on the president. Unsurprisingly, governors like this policy and even Democrat governors have praised it and him for choosing to delegate.
Clearly, for instance, the governor of Wyoming whose state has the lowest population density in the lower 48 (6/sq. mile) deals with a vastly different situation than the governor of, for instance, New Jersey which is highest at 1218 people per square mile. In WY social distancing is how we live normally; in NJ or RI they have to work at it.
