Author archives

Sidney Shapiro, Professor of Law, Wake Forest University: I've written ten books, contributed chapters to sixteen additional books, authored or co-authored over fifty-five articles. I am also the Vice-President and founding member of the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR), a nonprofit research and advocacy organization,Before coming to Wake Forest, I taught at the University of Kansas where I was a distinguished professor. I have also been a distinguished visitor at Oxford University, University of Padua, the law schools at the University of Texas and the University of North Carolina, and the School for Policy and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), University of Indiana, Bloomington. My latest book, coauthored by Joseph Tomain Dean Emeritus and Wilbert and Helen Ziegler Professor of Law in the University of Cincinnati College of Law, is How Government Built America, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in June, 2024.

Donald Trump wants to reinstate a spoils system in federal government by hiring political loyalists regardless of competence

If elected to serve a second term, Donald Trump says he supports a spoils system, a plan that would give him the authority to fire as many as 50,000 civil servants and replace them with members of his political party loyal to him. Under this plan, if he eventually deemed those new employees disloyal, he claims he could fire them too. Law professors Sidney Shapiro and Joseph P. Tomain write in their new book How Government Built America about how newly elected President Andrew Jackson, after he took office in 1828, fired about half the country’s civil servants and replaced them with loyal members of his political party. The result was not only an utterly incompetent administration, but widespread corruption.

Subjects: Congress, Ethics, Legal Research, United States Law