As we celebrate Constitution Day this week, a simple question suggests itself: What exactly does the Constitution constitute? Or, with respect to the Framers: What were these men trying to do? The Constitution cannot have constituted the American people. The
Geoffrey R. Stone, professor of law at the University of Chicago and editor of The Supreme Court Review, has a pertinent suggestion: the retirement of Judge Stevens and the impending nomination of his successor should spark “a frank discussion” of
`Left’ and `Right,’ Americans today call their political life out of joint, and therefore painful. A news cycle cannot go by without another show of genteel hand-wringing over Tea-Party activists and radio-show callers–their rage, their seemingly endless array of `phobias,’
As he prepared “Notes on Government” for publication in 1791, Congressman James Madison wrote a note to himself. “In proportion as slavery prevails in a State, the Government, however democratic in name, must be aristocratic in fact. The power lies