Tench Coxe
Tench Coxe on the Executive Branch: President, not a King
American presidents behave almost like elected kings, exercising vast powers with very little accountability. But that wasn’t the plan. Tench Coxe was a key figure in the ratification debates, and he argued the presidency was designed to be a far cry from a...
How Tench Coxe Shaped the Ratification Debates: Essays of A Pennsylvanian
History often overlooks Tench Coxe, but he was one of the most important founding fathers. While the Federalist Papers are celebrated and widely discussed today, Coxe’s essays, written under the pen name “A Pennsylvanian,” had a far greater impact on...
Tench Coxe and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Tench Coxe isn’t well-known today, but he was an influential figure in the founding era. Coxe advocated for the new Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and he wrote extensively about the right to keep and bear arms. In their paper Tench Coxe And The Right To Keep...
“Necessary” Is Not a Constitutional Argument
I hear a lot of bad constitutional arguments justifying this or that federal action. One common justification for expanding federal power is: “This thing is necessary! It needs to be done.” But it doesn’t follow that the federal government has to do...