Rhode Island’s Needed Pension Cuts Pass Legal Test: Noah Feldman
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From Athens to Rome to Providence, Rhode Island, the painful truth about pensions is the same: Unfunded liabilities need to be reformed, and unions don’t like it.
The difference: Europeans go to the streets when they are unhappy, and Americans go to the courts. In Rhode Island, a pension-reform plan hailed as a national model is being challenged as unconstitutional. Striking down reform would be a disastrous move -- not only for budgets but also for constitutional governance itself.