Incorporation of the Bill of Rights in the Fourteenth Amendment
Invocation of the Bill of Rights against the States is of fairly recent origin
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The Peoples’ Nullification: Resistance to the Stamp Act of 1765
Immobilizing the distribution of stamps, supplemented by official protests to Britain, could only be the first step in the peoples’ nullification of the Stamp Act.
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Judicial Revision: An “assumption of powers never meant to be granted”
If the Constitution is to be altered by judicial fiat, let it not be under seal of a reading Marshall himself repudiated.
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The Judiciary Was Excluded From Policymaking
The most significant single piece of evidence that the Framers excluded the judiciary from policymaking went unnoticed by bench and bar for over 100 years.
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Federalist #42: The Powers Conferred by the Constitution Further Considered”
Federalist No. 42 is an essay by James Madison, and the forty-second of The Federalist Papers. It was published on January 22, 1788 under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist Papers were published. Federalist No. 42 continues a theme that was started in Federalist No. 41. Here, Madison contends that the grant…
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The Union: Who Made It?
John Taylor, of Caroline County Virginia, was the preeminent theorist of Jeffersonian Old Republicanism. He was a strong advocate of individual and states rights in the face of the growing power of the federal government (“tyranny”) and opposed increased tariffs and mercantilist economic policy. Taylor was largely responsible for guiding the Virginia Resolution, written by James…
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King v. Burwell: Senator Nelson’s Letter, The Irrelevant “Bombshell”
by Michael Cannon, CATO Institute
The plaintiffs in King v. Burwell claim the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act only offers premium subsidies, as the statute says, “through an Exchange established by the State.” Members of Congress who voted for the PPACA – most recently Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) and former Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) – now swear it was never their intent to condition Exchange subsidies on state cooperation.
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Is The Fourteenth Amendment Good?
Few issues divide libertarians the way the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution does. Gene Healy has observed that “[c]lassical liberals of good faith have found themselves on either side of the issue.”
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Thomas Jefferson on the Misuse of the Commerce and General Welfare Clauses
Barely 8 months before he died, Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Virginia politician William Giles about the threat posed by the usurpation of states rights by a growing federal power. He identifies federal powers claimed under the commerce and general welfare clauses as especially dangerous.
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Thomas Jefferson on Congressional Abuse of Commerce and Welfare
Even by 1825, Thomas Jefferson was fearful that the growing central powers of the federal government were encroaching upon those of the states.
DetailsThomas Jefferson: On Elective Despotism, a Warning
Because Thomas Jefferson thought it would be only a matter of time before the American system of government degenerated into an “elective despotism,” he warned that citizens should act now in order to make sure that “the wolf [was kept] out of the fold.”
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