A commission of law officials from all fifty states is in the process of creating a legal framework to give wide powers to governors and state authorities during emergencies

By David Zweig

When I spoke to a couple attorney friends recently and asked them about the Uniform Law Commission one responded, “That’s really in the weeds legal stuff! Why are you interested in the ULC?” The other laughed and said, “I haven’t thought about this since law school.”

But the ULC—an organization that is highly influential yet scarcely known to the general public—drew my attention because it has taken on an issue of great and direct consequence to anyone invested in civil liberties: state emergency powers.

The ULC’s mission seems fairly prosaic: differences in state laws lead to a lot of headaches for interstate business dealings and other legal matters—the ULC exists to remedy this by making state laws more uniform. The organization comprises commissioners from each state who work together to draft statutes (essentially model laws), with the aim that individual state legislatures will then vote to adopt these statutes—the more states that adopt them the better. The Commission has influenced the passing of hundreds of laws, with its most famous accomplishment the Uniform Commercial Code, which governs commercial transactions.

But aside from the typical interstate legal matters under the organization’s mandate, one of its current projects—which seeks to unify and clarify governors’ special powers—may ultimately have a far more profound impact.

In a series of meetings that began in mid 2021, continuing through the present, a committee within the ULC has met to discuss and refine its draft of the Model Public-Health-Emergency Authority Act. (A vote on the Act by the full ULC is on the agenda for the Commission’s annual meeting in July.) The intention of the Act is to clarify “the powers of a governor to declare a public health emergency and to issue orders in response to that emergency.” The draft language that the ULC ultimately settles on, if your state legislature adopts the Act, will determine the extent of your governor’s ability to act as a mini dictator in the event that they declare an emergency.

Considering the wide-ranging implications, and the political and emotional heat around the infringement on civil liberties over the last three years, it is remarkable that, as far as I’ve been able to see, there has been absolutely zero media coverage on this.

Whether the powers that this document will grant are reasonable or alarming will be in the eye of the beholder.

Read More