“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.”
The Constitution’s multiple references to “state legislatures” raise difficult and significant issues. The main question is whether we can give a consistent answer to the meaning of this term across a large number of different constitutional clauses that both fits...
Political “progressives” have intensified their attack on the U.S. Constitution. This is the fourth in a series of essays showing why their principal charges are false. The first essay answered the charge that the Constitution discriminated against women. As that...
Many people today seem to think it’s the federal government’s job to protect their liberty. But the Founding Fathers didn’t. In fact, they feared the new government would become too powerful and trample individual liberty. They had a healthy distrust...
One day in January 1811, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a French man of letters whose book he so much admired that he translated it into English and saw to its American republication. Along the way, he explained to the Frenchman why there had been such a difference between...
The Constitution created a federal government with powers that, as James Madison said, were “few and defined.” Yet today the feds have their paws in almost every pocket of American life. How did that happen? One reason is that if you don’t know much about the...