1971
Mike Lee
Republican U.S. senator from Utah, in office since January 2011. Trained as a constitutional lawyer (Brigham Young University law school, clerked for Samuel Alito both at the Third Circuit and at the Supreme Court), with a long record of legislative positions framed in originalist constitutional terms. Currently chairs the Senate Commerce Committee.
Stake§
Lee writes and legislates from a constitutional-originalist position that treats latent or under-used constitutional powers as live grants rather than historical relics. The Cartel Marque and Reprisal Authorization Act of December 2025 fits that pattern — a deliberate re-introduction of Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 into mainstream legislative discourse, regardless of whether the bill itself moves. The function of the bill as a legal-discourse intervention is real even if the legislative trajectory is uncertain.
For the chartered-violence corpus Lee is significant as the contemporary American sponsor of marque-and-reprisal revival. The bill draws an explicit line from the constitutional grant — used last in 1815 — to a proposed contemporary application against drug cartels operating outside U.S. territory. Read alongside the long-running but small academic and defence-policy literature on letters of marque (against pirates, against terrorist organisations, against ransomware operators), Lee's bill is the most prominent legislative expression of an argument that has had quiet adherents for decades.