A Bureau agent stands between armed groups of Southern whites and Freedmen in this 1868 picture from Harper's Weekly.My last post discussed how John Paul Stevens, late of the Supreme Court, and author Michael Waldman advance a stingy, substantively empty view of the Second Amendment by ignoring the Constitution’s framework of limited, enumerated powers. That critique, of course, only goes to federal authority. The right to arms enforceable against the states rests on the Fourteenth Amendment.
This year’s Federalist Society convention had it all. Prospective presidential candidates. Potential Supreme Court nominees. Lively debates on issues ranging from the proper role of federalism to the impact of the Obama Administration’s regulatory agenda. Throughout the convention, many speakers, of all ideological stripes, agreed that the Obama Administration has taken a very expansive view of executive and agency power.
In this post at Volokh, Ilya Somin challenges Justice Clarence Thomas' recent remarks that "We the People" in the Preamble of the Constitution did not include African-Americans when it was ratified in 1787. The history is much more complex and interesting than many know, obscured as it has been owing to Chief Justice Roger Taney's majority opinion in Dred Scott, which articulated that both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution never recognized the rights of blacks who, in Taney's formulation, “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Part of his conclusive proof was that the…
Senator Ted Cruz address the convention.