All Posts Tagged With: "originalism"
The Fourth Amendment and Faulty Originalism
“All arrests are at the peril of the party making them.” —Alexander H. Stephens, August 27, 1863 These days the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution means next to nothing. Consider, for example, the choice offered a few years ago: surveillance under routine, easy “warrants” from the drive-through FISA Court or warrantless surveillance at the whim [...]
25Aug2010 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 3 comments | ContinuedCapital Letters
Mistreating the Constitution? If recent items in The Freeman are any indication, its writers take a rather dim view of the Constitution and the Framers thereof. While I couldn’t agree more regarding the people who wrote our federal compact (with a few exceptions), I must take issue with how the magazine treats the Constitution itself. [...]
1Oct2008 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedSlick 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 | ContinuedThe 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 | ContinuedA Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and The Law by Antonin Scalia
Princeton University Press • 997 • 159 pages • $19.95 Jürgen Skoppek is a magistrate on Michigan’s Workers’ Compensation Appellate Commission and holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School. The fate of our liberties no longer rests in the hands of the voting public, elected legislators, or executive-branch officials. Whatever liberties we are permitted to [...]
1Jan1998 | Jrgen Skoppek | 0 comments | Continued-
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