All Posts Tagged With: "originalism"

Capital 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.
Sheldon Richman [...]

1Oct2008 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | 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 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 | 2 comments | Continued