Tag
Constitution
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What the Courts Actually Said
The Flock scoreboard in court is currently their side, and pretending otherwise is a gift to the other side. It is also not the Fourth Amendment. A panel can be wrong about the thing it is construing, and this fight is not over.
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Purse and Sword
Congress holds the two powers that are most of what a government is: the purse and the sword, the power to tax and spend and the power to make war. It has handed both away, to the executive and to a tax with no ceiling. The second draft …
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The States' House
The Senate was never meant to be a second House. It was the chamber of the states, the states’ structural check on the federal government, until a 1913 amendment cut that wire and turned both chambers over to the same electorate. The …
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The People's House
The House was built to be the chamber closest to the people, and it has drifted furthest from them: frozen at 435, districts swollen to three-quarters of a million, apportioned by residents rather than citizens, filled by careerists. The …
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Why Rewrite It
Proposing to rewrite the Constitution sounds like sacrilege. But we have already rewritten it, by drift and convenience rather than by amendment, into something far less bound than the original. The only question left is whether we write an …
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It Was Never Property
When Sony deleted movies people had ‘bought,’ the internet answered with a slogan: if buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t theft. The grievance is real and the words are wrong, both halves of them. Copying was …
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The States Choose the President
The Electoral College is not a defect in an otherwise democratic system. It is the presidency built to the same plan as the Senate and the amendment rule and the whole compound structure: a union of states, choosing together, so that a …
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Beyond the Reach of the Vote
Democracy and republic are not two words for the same thing, and the difference is the whole argument. A democracy makes the will of the majority the highest authority. A republic puts a written law above the majority and places certain …
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The Soil Does Not Own You
In Trump v. Barbara the Court held that a child born to a tourist here for the weekend, or to a parent here illegally, is a citizen at birth, because the words ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ mean nothing more than being reachable …
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The Forgotten Amendment on Representation
The first amendment proposed by the First Congress addressed the size of the House of Representatives and how closely it should track population growth. It never became part of the Constitution. A modern statutory alternative called the …
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The Court Sided With the Soil
The Supreme Court just held that a child born to a tourist here for the weekend is an American at birth. To get there the majority revived a feudal rule that a free people threw off in 1776: that the ground you are born on owns you. Thomas …