All Posts Tagged With: "Bill of Rights"

Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything

In the gigantic theater that is American politics, one of the favorite roles for politicians to play is that of the tough guy who is determined to “crack down” on something or other. Such actions are predictably cheered by whatever voting groups the politician wants to curry favor with. An often-heard campaign line is, “Vote [...]

13Jul2010 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | Continued

Guns, Privileges, and Immunities

Randy Barnett in the Wall Street Journal (subscription site) notes that while four of the Supreme Court’s five-justice majority upheld the right to keep and bear arms against the states on Fourteenth Amendment due-process grounds, Justice Clarence Thomas’s “concurring opinion rested solely on the Privileges or Immunities Clause. While agreeing ‘with the Court that the [...]

29Jun2010 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued

The Great Writ Then and Now

The Great Writ Then and Now by Wendy McElroy Wendy McElroy (wendy@wendymcelroy.com) is an author, the editor of ifeminists.com, and a research fellow for the Independent Institute in Oakland, California. Habeas corpus is a rarely invoked legal writ, or document, widely considered to be the cornerstone of individual liberty. Also known as The Great Writ, [...]

23Oct2009 | Wendy McElroy | 1 comment | Continued

Second Amendment Book Bomb

Everyone committed to individual freedom in general and the right to keep and bear arms in particular will be interested in the Second Amendment Book Bomb. The book is The Founders’ Second Amendment by Stephen Halbrook, a top gun-rights scholar whom I’ve known for years. The point of the book bomb is to bring public [...]

13Dec2008 | Sheldon Richman | 107 comments | Continued

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, [...]

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

Freedom or Free-for-All?

Lawrence Reed became the president of FEE on September 1. To honor the occasion, we reprint his first “Ideas and Consequences” column, which was originally published in The Freeman in April 1994. Imagine playing a game—baseball, cards, “Monopoly,” or whatever—in which there was only one rule: anything goes. You could discard the “instruction book” from [...]

1Sep2008 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | Continued

The Constitution Within

I’ve argued previously that a free society depends ultimately on people having a proper sense of just conduct. This means more than the words they recite or put on parchment. Most crucial is how they act and expect others, such as those in the government, to act. For this reason it is futile to put [...]

1Sep2007 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | Continued

Democracy or Republic?

Walter Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University. How often do we hear the claim that our nation is a democracy? Was a democratic form of government the vision of the Founders? As it turns out, the word democracy appears nowhere in the two most fundamental founding documents [...]

1Jun2007 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | Continued

The Sovereign Presidency: Is This What the Framers Had in Mind?

American government under the Constitution was supposedly meant to work as follows: Congress, staying within delegated powers and the Bill of Rights, passes laws; the president executes the laws; and the courts sort out ensuing wrangles. This plan ran aground rather early—the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts, for example—which raises at least two possibilities: 1) [...]

1Jan2007 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 9 comments | Continued

Natural, Not National, Rights

Somewhere in my reading about immigration I encountered the deceptively simple point that it’s not immigration we should be talking about but migration. That’s another way of saying the focus has been on “us,” when it should be on the people coming to the United States. The discussion has proceeded as if they have no [...]

1Nov2006 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued

Democracy Versus Liberty

If a foreign power took over the United States and dictated that American citizens surrender 40 percent of their income, required them to submit to tens of thousands of different commands (many of which were effectively kept secret from them), prohibited many of them from using their land, and denied many the chance to find [...]

1Aug2006 | James Bovard | 2 comments | Continued

The Right to Be Left Alone

“The makers of the Constitution conferred the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by all civilized men—the right to be let alone.” -Justice Louis D. Brandeis According to Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, one of the “repeated injuries and usurpations” committed against the American people by the King of England [...]

1May2002 | Mark Skousen | 1 comment | Continued

Book Reviews – 2002/3

While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today by Donald Kagan and Frederick W. Kagan St. Martin’s Press o 2000 o 483 pages o $32.50 Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign Policy and Defense Policy edited by Robert Kagan and William Kristol Encounter Books o 2000 o 401 pages [...]

1Mar2002 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | Continued

How War Amplified Federal Power in the Twentieth Century

This article is reprinted from the July 1999 issue of The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty. After surveying the Western world in the past six centuries, Bruce Porter concluded: “a government at war is a juggernaut of centralization determined to crush any internal opposition that impedes the mobilization of militarily vital resources. This centralizing tendency of [...]

1Dec2001 | Robert Higgs | 0 comments | Continued

Rights Without Exceptions

Jeff Snyder is an attorney in New York City and is the “Gun Rights” columnist for American Handgunner magazine. This article is adapted from columns he wrote in the November/December 2000, January/February 2001, and May/June 2001 issues of that magazine. He is the author of Nation of Cowards: Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control [...]

1May2001 | Jeff Snyder | 2 comments | Continued

Rights Without Exceptions

Jeff Snyder (jsnyder@ekks.com) is an attorney in New York City and is the “Gun Rights” columnist for American Handgunner magazine. This article is adapted from columns he wrote in the November/December 2000, January/February 2001, and May/June 2001 issues of that magazine. He is the author of Nation of Cowards: Essays on the Ethics of Gun [...]

1Apr2001 | Jeff Snyder | 2 comments | Continued

Congress and Public Safety Unionism

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) applies to unionism in private-sector employment, except in the railroad and airline industries, where the Railway Labor Act sets the rules.No federal statute regarding unionism applies to state and local government employees. Rather, each state adopts its own rules, and 20 states have chosen not to engage in compulsory collective bargaining with unions representing public safety employees (such as police, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel).

1Feb2001 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | Continued
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