All Posts Tagged With: "Articles of Confederation"

The Holiday That Isn’t

I know it’s only October, but that’s late enough in the year for most people to have already begun thinking of the holidays just around the corner. We will each observe the traditional ones according to our personal wishes—a precious right won for us by past and present patriots.
Allow me to advise you, however, not [...]

1Oct2008 | Lawrence W. Reed | Comments Off | Continued

Slick Construction Under the Articles of Confederation

Writing lately on the Fourth Amendment, Professor Thomas Y. Davies decries the “originalism” practiced by certain Supreme Court justices and sundry legal commentators. On historical-hermeneutic grounds, he faults face-value originalism for missing “the shared, implicit assumptions that informed the public meaning” on which a given constitutional provision rested. Underlying the Fourth Amendment were common-law rules [...]

1Apr2008 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 1 comment | Continued

The Constitution or Liberty

“Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”
We might think those words—or words to the same effect—are in the U.S. Constitution. But they are not. They are from Article II of the Articles of [...]

1Jan2008 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued

Lost Articles

The Constitution says that to be elected to the U.S. Senate, a person has to be 30 or older, a citizen for at least nine years, and a resident of the state from which the candidate is elected.
Alas, it says nothing about knowing American history.
Good thing for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). He’d have to find [...]

1Jun2007 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | Continued

Is the Income Tax Unconstitutional?

Wishful thinking, always a temptation, is hazardous. Example: An awful lot of people think the income tax as it applies to private-sector wage earners is illegal—even unconstitutional—and they assume that if they can only come up with the right legal arguments, judges will strike down the tax and make America a free society once more. [...]

1Sep2006 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued

Nothing to Learn from the Antifederalists? It Just Ain’t So!

Joseph Stromberg is a historian and freelance writer.
According to Paul Greenberg, writing in the Washington Times in late January, the dreaded Antifederalists and their Articles of Confederation are making a comeback. In particular, these miscreants dare to question executive power. He writes with patriotic horror—a horror that assumes as self-evident a partisan reading of American [...]

1Jun2006 | Joseph Stromberg | 0 comments | Continued