Student Loans & the President’s Power of the Purse

By |2023-03-03T08:34:03-06:00March 2nd, 2023|Categories: Congress, Constitution, Education, Supreme Court|

President Joseph Biden’s creating and inserting of his student loan forgiveness program, which his Department of Justice solicitor general accurately just called a “benefit” program, into last fall’s midterms elections received a thorough hearing in the Supreme Court on Tuesday. In defense of the program, the government’s case turned on what statutory words normally mean [...]

Luther Martin of Maryland & the Constitutional Convention

By |2023-02-19T21:31:02-06:00February 19th, 2023|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Constitution, Featured, George Mason, George Washington, History, John Marshall, Timeless Essays|

Luther Martin understood human nature with a genius of sheer power, foresight, and brilliance. He believed that there can be no union without subsidiarity because without it, governments run with the cyclical and typical tyrannies of humankind. Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet, The Life of Luther Martin, by Bill Kauffman (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2008) “Happiness is [...]

John Marshall: A Primer

By |2023-02-03T11:30:44-06:00February 3rd, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Constitution, History, John Marshall, Senior Contributors, Supreme Court, Timeless Essays|

Perhaps more than any other figure in the early history of the American Republic, John Marshall shaped the Supreme Court as well as attitudes toward and understandings of the U.S. Constitution. John Marshall (September 24, 1755–July 6, 1835) was the fourth man to serve as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, following [...]

Martin Luther King & the Rule of Law

By |2023-01-16T09:38:34-06:00January 15th, 2023|Categories: Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Featured, John Creech, Martin Luther King Jr., Natural Law, Rule of Law, Timeless Essays|

In acknowledgement of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I wish to raise the question, based on Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” as to when, if ever, as well as to what extent, it is appropriate to defy the rule of law. On The Imaginative Conservative Winston Elliott raised the question “When is a Change [...]

Humbug to Scrooge & Sanger: The Constitution & the “Surplus Population”

By |2023-01-06T15:04:38-06:00January 6th, 2023|Categories: Constitution, Economics|

The "surplus population" is, in fact, the population that the Constitution is made to protect. What do Ebenezer Scrooge and Planned Parenthood have in common? The fundamental answer to this question is more than a sentimental appeal to “the Christmas spirit” or a “cheap-shot” at the abortion industry. The answer is found in the writings [...]

Modern America’s Executive Caesars

By |2022-11-16T09:17:16-06:00November 16th, 2022|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Constitution, Monarchy, Politics, Senior Contributors|

Why are the American people so ready to give themselves over to an emperor? Why do they want a god-king? I would suggest that our very loss of the classical world—especially in education—has led us to forget the great lessons of Western civilization. For what it’s worth, I do not consider myself a political person, [...]

Republicanism and “The Federalist” Papers

By |2022-11-09T13:10:04-06:00November 9th, 2022|Categories: American Republic, Constitution, Featured, Federalist Papers, George W. Carey, Republicanism, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

The first essay of The Federalist provides a convenient point of departure for exploring Publius’s conception of republicanism and the problems associated with it. Towards the end of this essay, he informs us that among the “interesting particulars” he intends to take up in the subsequent papers is “The conformity of the proposed Constitution to [...]

Will the Supreme Court Reaffirm Affirmative Action?

By |2022-11-03T23:17:33-05:00October 30th, 2022|Categories: Constitution, Equality, Supreme Court|

In its 1978 Bakke case, the Supreme Court created and condoned racial preference—“affirmative action” and “diversity”—in university admissions. Now the Court is hearing a fundamental challenge to this widespread and now ever-increasing practice in education and in society. As for the membership of the Court in what may turn out to be landmark decisions in [...]

James Wilson: Political Thought and the Constitutional Convention

By |2022-10-17T16:22:26-05:00October 17th, 2022|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Constitutional Convention, Featured, George W. Carey, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Scholars familiar with James Wilson note the discrepancy between status accorded him by most constitutional historians and the magnitude of his contributions to our founding. Scholars familiar with the writings and career of James Wilson are struck by the discrepancy between the status accorded him by most constitutional historians and the magnitude of his contributions [...]

Marshall vs. Jefferson: Then and Now

By |2022-09-25T17:22:18-05:00September 25th, 2022|Categories: American Republic, Constitution, Featured, Federalism, John Marshall, Politics, Thomas Jefferson, Timeless Essays|

In sharp contrast to John Marshall’s elitist orientation—with its em­phasis on the primacy of the national government, and restraint of the excesses of democracy—Thomas Jefferson’s philosophy was at once populistic and highly individualistic. Throughout the first decade of the American republic, competing claims regarding the proper interpretation of the Constitution and the application of its [...]

Original Unintentions: The Franchise and the Constitution

By |2022-09-16T17:05:19-05:00September 16th, 2022|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Constitution, Forrest McDonald, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Certain features of the Constitution are almost invisible because they refer to previously existing institutions, constitutions, laws, and customs that are nowhere defined in the Constitution itself. The controversy over originalism-the question whether judges, in interpreting the Constitution, should be guided by the original intentions of the Framers or by some other standard-has generated a [...]

How Congress Can Revive the Constitution

By |2022-09-16T17:07:32-05:00September 16th, 2022|Categories: American Republic, Constitution, Featured, Federalist Papers, History, Timeless Essays|

To be real, a Constitution must be lived, not honored in the breach. For without constitutional morality, there is no Constitution. And down that road, much hard experience already has taught us, lies tyranny. The Framers were acutely sensitive to the fears of many that a new federal government would erode the independence and authority [...]

Reading the Founding

By |2022-09-11T15:16:42-05:00September 11th, 2022|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Constitution, Federalist Papers, Timeless Essays|

The best way to understand the Constitutional Convention and the original intent of the Founders is not by studying The Federalist Papers, but by examining the various notes recorded by James Madison. For fifteen years now, I’ve had the rather grand and humbling privilege of teaching the entirety of the U.S. Constitution to freshmen each [...]

The Issue of Slavery at the Constitutional Convention

By |2022-07-12T14:40:32-05:00July 12th, 2022|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Constitutional Convention, Senior Contributors, Slavery|

The Constitutional Convention debated the issue of slavery over almost a week. In the end, the delegates reluctantly agreed to allow slavery for the sake of South Carolina and Georgia. We moderns and post-moderns can debate all we want, but the case is that the Convention came very close to abolishing slavery. Its acceptance of [...]

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