[Editor’s note: see also rounds 1-3 of our debate on originalism, interpretation, and whether the Constitution actually means anything. Austin Bramwell, “Original Sins”; Kevin R. C. Gutzman, “The Genuine Article”; and Bramwell, “Best of Intentions.”] Austin Bramwell began his first attack on me by saying that he had read my books. In his second, he quotes at length from Lysander Spooner, … [Read More]

Austin Bramwell says that I argue, “the Constitution grants the Federal government [sic] a handful of limited powers, but leaves the states free to govern as they like.” He adds that I assert, “nobody who actually reads the Constitution could possibly conclude otherwise.” According to Bramwell, I make this claim in my books and in “many online articles.” If, as he … [Read More]

Since the days of Ronald Reagan and Edmund Meese, the Republican Party’s position has been that judges should be bound by the people’s understanding of a particular constitutional provision at the time they ratified it.  This notion goes under the name “originalism.”  Recent events, including the Republican response to President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, reveal … [Read More]

On Monday, June 29, 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the plaintiffs, a group of white firefighters, in the case of Ricci v. DeStefano. According to the Court, New Haven, Connecticut violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in throwing out the results of a promotion examination. The Court, as is customary in cases in which other … [Read More]

People often ask me how I can write about Thomas Jefferson or James Madison, Abraham Lincoln or the American Revolution, the U.S. Constitution or the South.  Hasn’t it all been said?  Isn’t there already a mountain of books about them? They are right to think that a great amount of ink has been spilled on these topics.  Where a layman’s intuition … [Read More]

With its decision in Nordyke v. King last week, in which the recent Supreme Court Heller decision was applied to state law, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took another step down the long road of “incorporating” the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. In doing so, it continued down the path toward completely inverting the … [Read More]

Ohio State University’s law school recently held a symposium marking Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s fifteen years on the United States Supreme Court. Precisely why this milestone merited such treatment is hard to determine: like Thurgood Marshall, Ginsburg was arguably more important before she reached the Court than she has been since. My guess is that the organizers realized this was a way … [Read More]

Were the Founders “Post-Christian”? Two years ago, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham published American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation. There, as in his public appearances and journalism since, Meacham argued that the United States were founded on a Madisonian vision of secular government. Meacham of course did not blaze any new trail making that argument. In … [Read More]

The late, unlamented George W. Bush administration was a disaster for American constitutionalists. The second Bush insisted that he as president possessed inherent power to wire-tap American citizens despite constitutionally enacted laws, shielded his underlings against valid congressional subpoenas even so far as to permit them to refuse to plead “executive privilege” in person, rendered Federal Government supervision of even the … [Read More]

Under discussion: Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President, Thomas L. Krannawitter, Roman & Littlefield (2008), 376 pages Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Arch Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution—and What It Means for Americans Today, Thomas DiLorenzo, Crown Forum (2008), 256 pages.  Christianity made an epochal change by elevating ordinary people to spiritual equality with the social, political, and economic … [Read More]