Don’t tell the government. “It is a principle of common sense,” Spencer Roane said (pg. 145, Irreconcilable Founders), “as well as common law, that a deputy cannot make a deputy. The power of changing the government was, therefore, not bested
Killing children is naturally a topic people have strong feelings about. At large in our culture, this debate plays out between two diametric opposites. On the one side, those who advocate killing children in order to preserve a more pleasurable
‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse.’ So say the legal textbooks, the judge’s rulings, and all the cavalcade of legal orthodoxy. Yet on the face of it, this seems unjust. How can I be accountable to a law I
Men always want more power. Separation of powers, as Montesquieu laid it out, is a means of playing this cupidity against itself. The American implementation is not so focused on the balancing of classes as Montesquieu was (albeit some element
The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause must compete with another famous definition of the American government’s proper relationship with the church: Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, wherein he wrote of a “wall of separation between church and state” (Dreisbach).
Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book II: Of the Rights of Things commences with a brief discussion of the origin of property. Therein he states, quite rightly, that the Dominion Mandate of Genesis 1:28 is “the only true
The difference between an ‘originalist’ judge and a ‘living Constitution’ judge is significant. Conservatives laud the first (sometimes) and damn the second; liberals damn the first and (sometimes) laud the second. Delaney approaches the question of judicial philosophy more circumspectly
There is a constant refrain among conservative citizens in conservative states: “Not another bunch from California!” and “Bet they vote for the same stuff that got them in trouble back there.” Liberals from liberal states are fleeing the product of