“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
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...
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...
Once a dictator, always a dictator. Power-hungry, lawless and steadfast in its pursuit of authoritarian powers, the government does not voluntarily relinquish those powers once it acquires, uses and inevitably abuses them. Likewise, any presidential candidate...
Anti-Federalists generally worried that the Constitution would give the general government too much power. One area that caused concern was the power to make treaties. Patrick Henry addressed this issue in speeches during the Virginia ratifying convention. Under the...
Most presidential pardons — indeed all pardons that President Donald Trump has issued — have been for specific crimes of which the subject of the pardon has already been charged and convicted. Yet, Trump, never one to be restrained by precedent, has let it be hinted...