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Laboratories of democracy is a phrase popularized by U.S. Supreme Court JusticeLouis Brandeis inNew State Ice Co. v. Liebmann to describe how "a single courageousState may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."[1] Brandeis was anassociate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.
This concept explains how within thefederal framework, there exists a system of state autonomy where state and local governments act as social laboratories, where laws and policies are created and tested at the state level of thedemocratic system, in a manner similar (in theory, at least) to thescientific method. An example today would be thelegalization of marijuana in Colorado despite the fact that it is illegal federally.
TheTenth Amendment of theUnited States Constitution provides that "all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." This is a basis for thelaboratories of democracy concept, because the Tenth Amendment assigns most day-to-day governance responsibilities, including generalpolice power, to the state and local governments. Because there are 50 semi-autonomous states, different policies can be enacted and tested at the state level without directly affecting the entire country.
As a result, a diverse patchwork of state-level government practices is created. If any one or more of those policies are successful, they can be expanded to the national level by acts of Congress. For example, the Massachusettslegislature established ahealth care reform law in 2006 that became the model for the subsequentAffordable Care Act at the national level in 2010, or the variousconcealed carry state reciprocity agreements that motivated the subsequent proposed federalConcealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017.
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