A constitution has to have formal structures and requirements if it is to do its job of imposing the rule of law on people in positions of power. But for these formal structures to work, both the people and the governors they choose must recognize that they are important. I was at a conference recently [...]
For the Progressives, checks and balances were merely a hindrance to efficient government. How could it be wrong to act in accordance with the spirit of history? As “experts” replaced statesman, the whole idea of “the consent of the governed” became less important, even a stumbling block for the plans of Progressive reformers. Recently, Wyoming [...]
If we consider the Founders’ arguments for the Constitution, we find not only that they intended it to be undemocratic, but that they would defend even its most undemocratic elements on “popular” grounds. What might appear to the partisans of democracy today as outdated roadblocks to efficient government are for the Founders politically salutary forms [...]
The Constitution described by John Dickinson in his “Letters of Fabius” is a model of prudence and moderation, based not primarily on theoretical arguments, but on experience and an extensive knowledge of history. Though virtually ignored by scholars in recent decades, John Dickinson was one of the most influential of the American Founders. When he [...]
Americans turned to the concrete lessons of history and experience to guide them in securing their liberty. The French, on the other hand, deified Reason above not only experience, but also above religion and divine revelation. One of the many differences between the American and French Revolutions is that, unlike the French, Americans did not [...]
Forrest McDonald demonstrated that the historian above all must be a pragmatist who looks at the reality of the past as it was, who gets his hands dirty by putting in long hours of research, who makes sense of vast quantities of data, and who then communicates what he has found in an understandable and [...]
It is from careful textual analysis of “The Federalist” that the basic symbols of the American political tradition, and indeed the conservative tradition, may be found. III In his analysis of the Socrates of the Apology, Willmoore Kendall was hinting strongly at the probability that the contemporary John Stuart Mill-Karl Popper school in the United [...]
Government remains limited in civil society because God gave man the ability, through work and reason, to subdue the earth and thereby improve his life by the use of private property. Understanding Locke John Locke is one of the few major philosophers who can be used to provide a theoretical and moral foundation for American [...]
The paramount issue facing the Constitutional Convention was how to secure the safety and happiness of the people. Therefore, the paramount question which guided the deliberations was: What is justice? James H. Hutson concludes his valuable 1984 survey of two hundred years of Constitutional scholarship on a pessimistic note. Scholarship, says Hutson, is at a [...]
The first essay of The Federalist provides a convenient point of departure for exploring Publius’s conception of republicanism and the problems associated with it. Towards the end of this essay, he informs us that among the “interesting particulars” he intends to take up in the subsequent papers is “The conformity of the proposed Constitution to [...]
Certainly, James Madison cannot be faulted for not having seen the true dimensions of the problems associated with factions. Perhaps more clearly than other theorists who preceded him, he saw its root causes. Yet, he can be faulted for not having urged upon his audience the observance of that morality necessary for the perpetuation of [...]
To be real, a Constitution must be lived, not honored in the breach. For without constitutional morality, there is no Constitution. And down that road, much hard experience already has taught us, lies tyranny. The Framers were acutely sensitive to the fears of many that a new federal government would erode the independence and authority [...]
The best way to understand the Constitutional Convention and the original intent of the Founders is not by studying The Federalist Papers, but by examining the various notes recorded by James Madison. For fifteen years now, I’ve had the rather grand and humbling privilege of teaching the entirety of the U.S. Constitution to freshmen each [...]
The direction that constitutional practice has taken in the past hundred years shows that the Framers’ conception of republican government has passed and the era of populist democracy has arrived. The underlying transformation of the unwritten constitution renders efforts to return to the Framers’ original intent problematic. Much has been written in the past century [...]