John Calhoun’s California
In his speech announcing a Justice Department lawsuit against the State of California, Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested that the Golden State is treading the path of the confederacy....
View ArticleLeave the Constitution Alone
Writing in the New York Times, Meagan Day and Bhaskar Sunkara condemn America’s Constitution as designedly “anti-democratic.” The “subversion of democracy,” they say, “was the explicit intention of...
View ArticleMarshall, the Dartmouth College Case, and Originalism
Two hundred years ago this week, the Supreme Court issued its now famous ruling in Dartmouth College v. Woodward. Writing for the Court, John Marshall defended the independence of Dartmouth College...
View ArticleDefending Religion as a Public Good
The Supreme Court’s ruling in American Legion v. American Humanists Association prevented a wrong, but missed an opportunity to do some good. The high court was right to thwart the aggressive...
View ArticleTrump, Tocqueville, and American Democracy
President Trump’s most strident critics present him as a kind of alien threat to our democracy: a fascist, a potential dictator, perhaps foisted on the country by the aid of a foreign, undemocratic...
View ArticleIn Search of Virtù
Editor’s Note: This essay is part of a symposium on vindicating a prudent politics within the GOP. A few years ago, seeking to understand Donald Trump’s remarkable triumph, I wrote a short article...
View ArticleThe Mandate and the Rule of Law
Last Friday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an opinion reaffirming and explaining the basis of its stay of President Biden’s much-discussed vaccination mandate—or,...
View ArticleDobbs and Democratic Legitimacy
A specter is haunting the American left—the specter of Roe v. Wade being overturned. Hence the panicked reactions of left-wing commentators to last week’s oral argument before the Supreme Court in...
View ArticleMalice Toward All, Defamation for None?
Right after Thanksgiving, a federal judge for the Southern District of New York ruled that former Congressman Devin Nunes’s lawsuit against NBC-Universal Media may proceed. Nunes is suing...
View ArticleSullivan and the Right to Reputation
The task of today’s constitutionalists—and the task of constitutionalists of every generation—is to preserve our fundamental law, protecting it against the forces that seek to transform it. What are...
View Article