On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case of Trump v. CASA, Inc. Though the case arises out of President Donald Trump’s January executive order on birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment, Thursday’s oral argument had…
The argument for the power of the judicial branch to rule acts of the legislature invalid under the Constitution is set out in The Federalist. If it be said that the legislative body are themselves the constitutional judges of their…
As an old political science professor speaking to law-school oriented Federalist Society students, I had long offered a course labeled “The Real Constitution” to distinguish mine from the one taught in law schools. Recently, the title attracted two Federalist chapter…
The 85 essays that comprise The Federalist Papers are in great measure concerned with the principle of the separation of powers — that “the legislative, executive and judiciary departments ought to be separate and distinct,” since the “accumulation of all…
The headlines speak plainly. As with this one from the Washington Times: “Trump ‘not joking’ about a 3rd term, says there are ways around constitutional limits.” The story reports: President Trump is flirting with running for a third term —…
President Donald Trump in his first address to Congress highlighted some of the wasteful spending targeted by the Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE under Elon Musk is tasked with eliminating waste, ending fraud, identifying harmful regulations, and holding the bureaucracy…
Sometimes when running through seemingly settled arguments, we can’t see the forest of clarity for the trees of minutia thanks to bumping our faces into their distracting limbs. So, before we get to those trees, let us look at that…
At his 2005 Senate confirmation hearing to be chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts famously invoked America’s national pastime in describing his view of the judicial role in our constitutional order: “Judges are like umpires. Umpires…
Ben Jonson was a younger contemporary of Shakespeare. He was a playwright and poet of the highest caliber. The distance of the four centuries blurs the sharp particulars of the trials all must go through to earn their stripes, especially…
