The Nature of the Federal Government
We have flipped the American constitutional system on its head. It operates exactly the opposite of how the supporters of the Constitution said it would. So, what type of government did the Constitution create? Is it powerful or weak? Is it expansive or limited? How...
James Wilson’s State House Yard Speech: A Primer
On October 6, 1787, eminent Pennsylvanian James Wilson delivered his famous “State House Yard Speech” in support of the Constitution in Philadelphia. On the dawn of the first true test for the Constitution’s palatability, Wilson sought out to explain how the...
New evidence on the “Power To . . . regulate . . . Commerce”
The Constitution empowers Congress “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” Article I, §8, cl. 3. During the New Deal of the 1930s, liberal constitutional writers began to argue that “Commerce” as the...