Constitution

Whither Congress?

by Scott McPherson September 23, 2002

As President Bush rushes the nation headlong into another foreign war, an important question should be finally and unambiguously answered: What exactly were those old gentlemen talking about in 1787 when they wrote that Congress, not the president, held the power to declare war? Are we to believe that they actually ...

Economic Liberty and the Constitution, Part 4

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2002

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 |  Table of Contents After the end of the Civil War, the “carpetbag” ...

Economic Liberty and the Constitution, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2002

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 |  Table of Contents Throughout the ages, governments have regulated the economic affairs ...

Economic Liberty and the Constitution, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2002

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 |  Table of Contents THE PRIMARY SIGNIFICANCE of the Declaration of Independence lay ...

Economic Liberty and the Constitution, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2002

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 |  Table of Contents IN 1905, the constitutionality of Joseph Lochner’s criminal conviction by the ...

Rights Belong to Individuals

by Sheldon Richman June 1, 2002

If you want insight into the mentality of the intellectual elite, observe the hysterical reaction to the Bush administration’s declaration that the right to keep and bear arms is — horror! — an individual right. In two U.S. Supreme Court briefs filed by the Justice Department on May 6, Solicitor General ...

Freedom and Campaign-Finance Reform

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2002

Amidst not very much fanfare, President Bush has signed the new campaign-finance reform bill into law. This one closes the so-called soft-money loophole that permits large donations to be injected into federal campaigns through contributions to political parties. There are two big problems, however, with this most recent attempt to end corruption in the political process: First, it won’t work ...

Bush’s Contempt for Trial by Jury

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2002

BOWING TO PUBLIC PRESSURE, the Bush administration has modified its rules for the trials of suspected terrorists captured abroad. Included among the new rules are: (1) the accused will be presumed innocent rather than guilty; (2) the government will be required to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt; (3) the defendant will have the right to have an attorney ...

Civil Liberty and the State: The Writ of Habeas Corpus

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2002

LIMITING THE POWERS OF GOVERNMENT has been one of the leading struggles in the history of mankind. Through most of man’s time on earth, governments have presumed to rule, command, order, and threaten multitudes of human beings — to make the mass of humanity bend to the will of their political masters. The political rulers have often considered themselves to ...

Declaring and Waging War: The U.S. Constitution

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2002

Excuse me for asking an indelicate question in the midst of war, but where does President Bush derive the power to send the United States into war against another nation? The question becomes increasingly important given that the president has indicated that once the Afghan War has been brought to a conclusion, he intends to ...

Thank Goodness for the Bill of Rights!

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 2, 2002

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s recent admission that a U.S. raid in Afghanistan mistakenly killed 16 innocent people suggests how grateful Americans should be that their ancestors insisted on the inclusion of a Bill of Rights as a condition of adopting the U.S. Constitution. While the U.S. raiders were convinced that the victims of the ...

Did the Framers Forget the Bill of Rights?

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2002

AFTER THE CONSTITUTION WAS RATIFIED in 1788, the states adopted the first 10 amendments, which became known as the Bill of Rights. Given the importance of the provisions in those amendments, an obvious question arises: Why didn’t the Framers of the Constitution include those provisions in the original Constitution, thereby obviating the need to amend the document so soon ...