Laboratories of democracy

Laboratories of democracy is a phrase popularized by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann to describe how "a single courageous 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.

"[1] Brandeis was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.

As a result, a diverse patchwork of state-level government practices is created.

For example, the Massachusetts legislature established a health care reform law in 2006 that became the model for the subsequent Affordable Care Act at the national level in 2010, or the various concealed carry state reciprocity agreements that motivated the subsequent proposed federal Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017.

This article relating to law in the United States or its constituent jurisdictions is a stub.