James Madison Vetoes Infrastructure Bill as Unconstitutional
By: Dave Benner On the last day of his administration, March 3, 1817, President James Madison vetoed the Bonus Bill of 1817 – a plan that called for the federal ...
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The Relevance of the Preamble to Constitutional Interpretation
By: Michael Rappaport The preamble to the United States Constitution is something that is widely employed within political and theoretical arguments but is virtually never relied upon in court cases ...
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The “General Welfare” Clause
by JOHN W. BUGLER We Americans find ourselves faced with the disquieting specter of a national debt measured in trillions of dollars: a sum truly inconceivable. Many economists and politicians ...
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Gouverneur Morris’s Rewriting of the Constitution
by Mike Rappaport Recently, the Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism held its annual Works-in-Progress Conference. One of the papers was written by Dean William Treanor of Georgetown Law ...
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Today in History: The Missouri Compromise Signed into Law
By: Dave Benner Today in 1820, a set of bills that came to be known as the “Missouri Compromise” were signed into law by President James Monroe. Initially seen as ...
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Today in History: The Boston Massacre
By: Dave Benner Today in 1770, a violent incident unfolded on Boston’s King Street, where an agitated group of colonists swarmed around a group of British regulars. After a group ...
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A New Conservative Agenda
A governing philosophy for the twenty-first century by Daniel McCarthy What has been known as conservatism in the Republican party since Ronald Reagan left office, fully thirty years ago, has ...
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Today in History: The General Government Inaugurated Under the Constitution
By: Dave Benner Today in history, on March 4th, 1789, the general government under the United States Constitution went into effect. The occasion represented the end of a bitter ratification ...
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Shall We Defend Our Common History?
Roger Kimball The recent news that the University of Notre Dame, responding to complaints by some students, would “shroud” its twelve 134-year-old murals depicting Christopher Columbus was disappointing. It was ...
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What Would the Impartial Spectator Do?
by Joseph Knippenberg Every spring, I have the great good fortune of reading and discussing Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments with a captive (i.e., general education) audience of sophomores. ...
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