In his excellent memoir, Georgetown Law Center Professor Randy Barnett reveals what he has long maintained: “There will never come a time when our liberty is permanently secured, but there may well come a time when our liberty is permanently lost.” A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, by Randy Barnett (635 [...]
A constitution has to have formal structures and requirements if it is to do its job of imposing the rule of law on people in positions of power. But for these formal structures to work, both the people and the governors they choose must recognize that they are important. I was at a conference recently [...]
Were the actions of Thomas Jefferson as president consistent with his constitutional theory? David N. Mayer’s account raises fundamental but unanswered questions. The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson by David N. Mayer (416 pages, University of Virginia Press, 1995) Thomas Jefferson continues to fascinate scholars. A voluminous literature examines his long public career and extensive comments on [...]
Traditional rankings of the American presidents ask whether our chief executives did what was necessary for the good of the country. But should we look to their fidelity to the Constitution as a better way to evaluate their behavior in office? 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America: And Four Who Tried to Save Her, by [...]
Americans historically have not just believed in the “right” to bear arms, but they have, more importantly, claimed an actual republican duty of all Americans to bear arms. Every two years at Hillsdale College, I have the immense privilege of teaching three of our upper-level U.S. survey courses: American Founding (1753-1806); Democratic America (1807-1848); and [...]
It would be worse than a shame to get rid of the singular invention of those who drafted the Constitution of 1787. It would be a mistake, and a very big mistake at that. Just what was that unique entity? It would be the creation of “electors” to serve in what we have come to [...]
Harry Jaffa’s constitutional history of America’s late-eighteenth-century is not credible nor, in keeping with many of his own pronouncements, is it conservative. The writing of history, as we have learned from authors as diverse as Thucydides, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Butterfield, Collingwood, and Oakeshott can and has been done in strikingly different ways while serving radically different [...]
If we consider the Founders’ arguments for the Constitution, we find not only that they intended it to be undemocratic, but that they would defend even its most undemocratic elements on “popular” grounds. What might appear to the partisans of democracy today as outdated roadblocks to efficient government are for the Founders politically salutary forms [...]
The Constitution described by John Dickinson in his “Letters of Fabius” is a model of prudence and moderation, based not primarily on theoretical arguments, but on experience and an extensive knowledge of history. Though virtually ignored by scholars in recent decades, John Dickinson was one of the most influential of the American Founders. When he [...]
The film “Nothing But the Truth” is a well-played, honest effort to flesh out First Amendment issues in a dangerous world of often divided loyalties. “I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” [...]
Our collective confusion about the American experience begins at the beginning. Most Americans who think about such questions imagine that they understand the Declaration of Independence, though many of them may be puzzled that it did not (and does not) produce the results one might expect from the commitments which they believe it makes. After [...]
“Dred Scott” is a landmark decision because it answered questions regarding slavery that the Supreme Court had not previously addressed. It is also one of the most infamous decisions, furthering the great divide facing the nation regarding the question of slavery and moving the country further down the path toward the Civil War. Dred Scott [...]
It is a source of gratification and of encouragement to me to observe that the great result of this experiment upon the theory of human rights has, at the close of that generation by which it was formed, been crowned with success equal to the most sanguine expectations of its founders. The following is John [...]
The time may come when it shall be the duty of a State, in order to preserve itself from the oppression of the general government, to have recourse to the sword—In which case the proposed form of government declares that the State and every of its citizens who act under its authority are guilty of [...]