Image: Todd Taluman Photography / Shutterstock.comGouverneur Morris’s Rewriting of the Constitution
George Washington speaks at the Constitutional Convention (Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com).Culture’s Challenge to Constitutionalism
Image: Mike Dotta / Shutterstock.comThe Original Meaning of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” Part II
Independence Hall in Philadelphia, PA (Sean Pavone/Shutterstock.com).No! The Electoral College Was Not about Slavery!
George Washington presiding over the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia.Reason Bounded by Experience
The Constitution by Barry Faulkner, Mural the Rotunda of the Capitol. Source: National ArchivesTo say legislation is not a discretely rational exercise is not to say it is positively irrational. But what of the fundamental law that is often taken to be the apex of legislative reason: the Constitution of the United States?
The Ingenious Gouverneur Morris
"The true object of a great statesman," Gouverneur Morris wrote to William Carmichael in Madrid in November 1792, "is to give to any particular nation the kind of laws which is suitable to them and the best constitution which they are capable of." He wrote those words in Paris in the midst of the escalating chaos of the French Revolution; in less than two months, Louis XVI, America's "great friend" to its own Revolution, would lose his head on the guillotine. The event would be no surprise to Morris, who had predicted the derailing of the Revolution within a very…
