Bonham’s Case

November 21, 2016|Bonham's Case, Common Law, Due Process Clause, Edward Coke, Hoke v. Henderson, Justice Clarence Thomas, Liberty, Liberty of the Subject Act, Obergefell v. Hodges, William Blackstone

Defining Liberty Properly

by Devin Watkins|

On the Originalism blog, Michael Ramsey and Andrew Hyman responded to my post for Law and Liberty on the original understanding of substantive due process. Hyman disputes the definition of “liberty” I provided and asserts a different definition of “due process of law” in the Fifth Amendment, while Ramsey asks for more evidence that the definition of “liberty” given wasn’t unique to Thomas Jefferson.

August 3, 2015|Bonham's Case, Natural Law, R.H. Helmholz, Somerset's Case, William Blackstone

The Elephant in the Courtroom: The Inescapable Legacy of Natural Law

by Bruce P. Frohnen|

R.H. Helmholz begins his groundbreaking new book with a deceptively humble claim: In early modern Europe and early republican America, natural law had “real but limited success in determining the outcome of contested cases.” Helmholz’s exhaustive analysis of historical records shows that arguments rooted in the natural law tradition influenced court cases in the years before the legal revolutions set in motion by the Napoleonic and American Civil Wars, but almost always in conjunction with citations of positive law. Natural Law in Court: A History of Legal Theory in Practice corrects those who dismiss natural law as mere ideological window dressing,…

March 24, 2014|Administrative State, Bonham's Case, Common Law, Non-User Doctrine, Obamacare

The Dead Letter of the Law

by Richard M. Reinsch II|

A recent report from the Wall Street Journal flatly stated that with “so many unilateral executive waivers and delays . . . ObamaCare must be unrecognizable to its drafters, to the extent they ever knew what the law contained.” As Richard Epstein memorably put it, this amounts to “Government by Waiver.” In the case of Obamacare, the waivers and exemptions go to the heart of the bill itself. Healthcare coverage mandates for companies have been waived until 2015, and now word comes that the individual mandate has been quietly waived indefinitely for those individuals whose plans were cancelled and who cannot find affordable insurance on the exchanges.

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

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