Who Decides? The Founders’ Forgotten System of Checks and Balances
“There is not a syllable in the constitution, that makes a decision of the judiciary – of its own force, and without regard to its correctness – binding upon any body, either upon the executive, or the people.” That’s from Lysander Spooner, reminding us of...
Little Known Episode in U.S. History Explains Executive War Powers
Within five years of the publishing of The Federalist papers (and four years of the ratification by the states of the Constitution), the co-authors of those seminal and influential essays on American political theory and constitutional interpretation were back at...
Edmund Randolph vs the National Bank
After Congress passed a bill to establish the first national bank in early 1791, President George Washington asked Attorney General Edmund Randolph to prepare an opinion on the bill’s constitutionality. Randolph came down firmly against the measure, arguing that the...