Judiciary
Thomas Jefferson’s Greatest Fear: The Federal Judiciary and the Death of Liberty
“The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary.” That’s Thomas Jefferson – sounding the alarm over what he saw as the greatest threat to the Constitution and your liberty. He gave us four main warnings: Consolidation is death to freedom....
Three Pillars of Power: Luther Martin’s Anti-Federalist Warnings
Luther Martin warned that the Constitution would create a centralized national government with few real restraints – one that would steadily erode state sovereignty, override local control, and impose its will under the guise of law. In his essay Genuine...
Lysander Spooner’s Case Against Judicial Supremacy
“An unconstitutional judicial decision is no more binding than an unconstitutional legislative act.” That was Lysander Spooner, utterly rejecting the doctrine of judicial supremacy – the dangerous notion that a judicial opinion becomes law simply because judges...
The Supreme Court Was Wrong About Taxes
Along with some good decisions, Supreme Court justices made some mistakes in the term just ended. One mistake involved taxes—and it is likely to bedevil the court in future cases. Moore v. United States posed the question of whether Congress could tax corporate...