Constitution

On the special counsel, presidential pardons, and impeachment, the most important decisions will be rendered not by judges or senators but by the American people

Was the 14th Amendment a new Constitution?

Plus, Dinesh D'Souza's new movie.

On presidential pardons and commutations.

Adam J. White on the states’ underappreciated role in our constitutional system(s).

Reading into "current understandings" of the document would allow our constitutional rights to be sacrificed to the gods of political correctness, political expediency, and political fear.

The First Amendment to the Constitution does not impose, as some believe, “a wall of separation between church and state.” That phrase comes from a letter by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to Connecticut Baptists, cited approvingly by Supreme Court decisions in 1878 and 1947.

Last week, I wrote that I thought Donald Trump was dangerous but that it would be a “tragic mistake” to remove him. Here’s why: The 25th Amendment. There’s been a lot of talk recently about invoking that amendment in order to remove Trump from office.

For better and worse (mostly worse), Donald Trump was undoubtedly 2016’s person of the year. For better or worse (almost entirely for the better), 2017’s person of the year has to be Publius.

Every four years we elect a president. And every four years someone emits a squeak of protest that the method we use for electing presidents under the Constitution—the Electoral College—is unfair, undemocratic, antiquated, or unpopular and should therefore be eliminated. Most of the time, this is…

As Jonathan Adler writes here at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Judge Roy Moore is “constitutionally illiterate” on some basic issues. He also happens to be biblically illiterate in a crucial particular.

Asked about allegations Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore dated and engaged in inappropriate conduct with teenage girls several decades ago, Alabama state senator Dick Brewbaker commented “I do not buy the idea that suddenly because it’s now the U.S. Senate, she felt like she had to come…

“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

The Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos, who in the 1970s won the Panama Canal back for his country, used to tell less successful Latin American leaders that the United States is like a monkey on a chain. You can play with the chain all you like—but if you play with the monkey, you’ll get badly hurt.…

The Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos, who in the 1970s won the Panama Canal back for his country, used to tell less successful Latin American leaders that the United States is like a monkey on a chain. You can play with the chain all you like—but if you play with the monkey, you’ll get badly hurt.…

In a crisis pregnancy center in the heart of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, a counselor receives an online message. The sender says that she’s pregnant and scared and that she has no one to talk to. She has an appointment scheduled at an abortion clinic that very day. After a brief exchange with the…

To understand the pragmatic realities of federal governance in the 21st century, one must recognize the existence of a fourth branch of government: the administrative state. We have some two million federal bureaucrats with extraconstitutional legislative powers. Not only do they write the reams of…

To understand the pragmatic realities of federal governance in the 21st century, one must recognize the existence of a fourth branch of government: the administrative state. We have some two million federal bureaucrats with extraconstitutional legislative powers. Not only do they write the reams of…

Twitter has a remarkable power to make well-credentialed people look like fools. Case in point: Joyce Chaplin, who is theJames Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University.

Time will tell whether the American cruise missile strike against the Syrian air base will deter future Syrian government use of chemical weapons or even whether it was sufficient punishment for Assad's gross and continuing violation of international norms against their use. But it's clear that…

The seal of the president of the United States features an eagle clutching the arrows of war in its left talon and the olive branch of peace in its right, a fitting symbol of the expansive powers of the American executive. But one might just as well have substituted a pen and a telephone to…

The seal of the president of the United States features an eagle clutching the arrows of war in its left talon and the olive branch of peace in its right, a fitting symbol of the expansive powers of the American executive. But one might just as well have substituted a pen and a telephone to…

The state of New York currently has some of the strictest weapons laws in America. But a statute banning most residents from possessing Tasers is now facing a federal lawsuit alleging that it violates the Second Amendment.

In his weekly column at the Washington Free Beacon, Matthew Continetti takes note of Clarence Thomas's 25 years on the Supreme Court. Taciturn on and off the bench, Thomas has in recent days spoken at the Heritage Foundation as well as to WEEKLY STANDARD editor Bill Kristol on Conversations.…

The American university, once idealized as an ivory tower, is at risk of becoming an ideological echo chamber. Once scholars gazed out at a distant world from their monastic perch, debating how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Now scholars seem to gaze out at the world from a single…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with frequent contributor Adam J. White on the future of the Constitution and the Supreme Court in 2016, and the new 'Originalists Against Trump' letter.

The men who drafted the Constitution rightly earned our eternal praise. In 1787, they met in Philadelphia, where they pondered, debated, and haggled for four months. James Madison, George Washington, and the rest scrapped the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with a new governing document.

Saturday we celebrated "Constitution Day", the day (September 17, 1787) when the delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the final document and sent it off to the states for ratification.

The men who drafted the Constitution rightly earned our eternal praise. In 1787, they met in Philadelphia, where they pondered, debated, and haggled for four months. James Madison, George Washington, and the rest scrapped the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with a new governing document.

During the American Revolution, the Book of Samuel became a popular text for sermons. In particular the story of the people Israel begging for a king: “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles." Samuel…

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg again feels compelled to urge the Senate to vote on President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the seat held by the late justice Antonin Scalia. At an event this week for incoming law students at Georgetown University, Ginsburg said the Senate should vote on…

It was a pleasant surprise to learn that Harvey Mansfield's latest "Conversation with Bill Kristol" is a discussion of his wonderful 1993 book, America's Constitutional Soul. But I was all the more pleased to tune in and discover how Kristol begins their discussion: by comparing America's…

It's truly unfortunate what happened to Donald Trump Tuesday. To have one's words all twisted and misconstrued—it's rather unfair. First, here's what the Republican nominee said: "Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick … and if she…

"It might may (sic) no difference, but for [Kentucky] and [West Virginia] can we get someone to ask [Sanders's] belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern…

"Our Constitution is great. But it doesn't necessarily give us the right to commit suicide, okay?"

Let’s make America great again, you say? We'd settle for making the Constitution great again. That's been a goal of Republicans for years, and it's a worthy one. It is essential, in fact, to making America great again.

"Within the context of the times it is clear that 'all men' was a euphemism for 'humanity,' and thus those people, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, who used the Declaration of Independence to demand equality for African Americans and women seized the…

Cleveland

Under Article V of the Constitution, a constitutional amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress or by a special convention called by Congress on the application of two-thirds of the state legislatures. Thus, Congress controls one path for proposing amendments,…

Donald Trump is so committed to upholding the Constitution that, if elected and sworn into office, his oath to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" will include protecting and defending parts of the Constitution that do not exist.

Virginia Republicans are considering efforts to block Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe’s new executive order restoring the voting rights of the state's former felons. McAuliffe's order, announced on Friday, would give nearly 206,000 violent and nonviolent convicts who have served their time the…

Senator Charles Grassley has responded to President Obama's post last week on SCOTUS blog titled "A Responsibility I Take Seriously." Which responsibility might that be? "The power to appoint judges to the Supreme Court," said the president.

As Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott spoke with evident pride about how many times he’d sued the federal government. The total came to 31, and invariably the lawsuits challenged actions that Abbott believed violated federal statutes or the Constitution. Now, as Texas governor, he is no longer in…

The Constitution provides that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." But, as Gary Scott Smith of Grove City College writes in his new book, Religion in the Oval Office, "Throughout American history many citizens have…

Ben Carson remains in the presidential race notwithstanding the conventional wisdom that the retired neurosurgeon and first-time-candidate-for-any-office wouldn’t last this long. Indeed, the most recent polls show Carson leading Donald Trump in Iowa, which kicks off the presidential primary season…

To the eye of Charles Murray, the situation is grim—grimmer than you realize. Our government is increasingly corrupt. The legal system is lawless. The regulatory agencies possess tyrannical levels of power. Murray, social scientist and author of Losing Ground and Coming Apart, no longer believes…

Consider that in Republican Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, we have a presidential candidate who during his high school years in Houston was among several students who met twice a week to read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers and the even more…

Because presidential politics are as much about in-group signaling as actual policy, Ben Carson is locked in a media-generated controversy about whether or not he’d be down with having a Muslim president. Carson was asked about this deeply-important question on Meet the Press. He said no. And when…

In 1878, William Gladstone described the U.S. Constitution as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” Gladstone was right.

One of the most disturbing aspects of living through the Obama presidency is reading every week or two about some new decision that has been decreed by the executive branch rather than voted upon by the legislative branch.  Time and again, things that — in a constitutional republic — should be…

Ted Cruz, who in 1996 clerked for then-chief justice William Rehnquist and is now a first-term senator and GOP presidential candidate, has assumed the leadership of conservatives aiming to rein in a Supreme Court they fault for imposing on the country rights not found in the Constitution. This is…

In Africa today, President Obama said that he think he's a "pretty good president." So good, indeed, that if he ran for a third term, he "could win." But he cannot, he acknowledged, because it's against the law.

In his new book on the Constitution, Senator Mike Lee, the first-term Utah Republican, recalls his decision to run for the upper chamber in 2010. “It bothered me that even in the Republican Party, far too many elected officials have been reluctant to engage the public in a meaningful constitutional…

In explaining the process of design to an audience at Harvard, Charles Eames once resorted to parable. In India, he explained, people of the lowest caste would eat off banana leaves. People a bit higher up the social scale would eat off a ceramic dish whose shape was inspired by the banana leaf.…

According to Miles's Law, "where you stand depends on where you sit." And so when Vice President Joe Biden hyperventilates over Republican senators' criticism of the Obama administration's negotiations with Iran, we must take him with a grain of salt. He used to have a seat in the Senate; now he…

Terry Eastland reviews A Conflict of Principles in the Wall Street Journal:

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming address to Congress, at Congress's invitation, is drawing significant criticism -- that much is no great surprise. What does surprise, however, is one particular criticism: that the event will be not just bad policy, but even unconstitutional. 

Today, America bids farewell to the Magna Carta. The 800-year old document returns home to Lincolnshire, England, after six months in America. It landed at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in July, and spent the past few months at the Library of Congress.

Bill Kristol reports that Harry V. Jaffa passed away yesterday:

Here's David Brooks's review of the late Walter Berns's 2001 book, Making Patriots, from our May 21, 2001 issue:

President Obama quietly issued 12 pardons and 8 commutations late yesterday afternoon, which happened to be one of the busiest news days of the year.

In Thursday’s lead editorial, the Wall Street Journal argues that congressional “Republicans can’t win by shutting down the government”; thus, they should not attempt to deny President Obama the funding he needs to carry out his unconstitutional executive amnesty for 5 million illegal immigrants. …

Former White House spokesman Jay Carney admitted on CNN that President Obama has indeed flip-flopped on executive amnesty--and that the actions he's taking now are ones he previously called unconstitutional. Here's video:

White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri defended President Obama's planned executive amnesty by saying it "doesn't" shred the Constitution:

In 2014, President Obama has made much of his pen-and-a-phone strategy to accomplish his goals in the face of what he calls an "unprecedented pattern of obstruction" from Republicans in Congress. Apparently the president's supporters are on board with the idea of unilateral executive action. At…

The White House says "the constitutional lawyer in the Oval Office disagrees" with the Supreme Court's decision today on the contraceptive mandate in Obamacare:

Two and a half years ago, President Obama tired of the Senate's refusal to confirm several of his nominations. Dissatisfied with the Constitution's general requirement that the president make appointments only after receiving the Senate's "advice and consent," he chose a more direct route. He…

In NLRB v. Noel Canning, whatever the differences between the bare majority of five justices led by Justice Breyer and the four dissenters for whom Justice Scalia wrote, there is no question between the contending sides that President Obama acted unconstitutionally in making three ostensible recess…

If there is any realm of policy that the American Founders were most firmly committed to having be decided by the most representative branch — the Congress — it was presumably the realm of taxation.  Those who wrote the Constitution were not content even to let the Senate initiate tax policy. …

Nancy Pelosi is fundraising to amend the Constitution of the United States. 

From 2005 through 2008, legal scholars and Democratic politicians heaped relentless scorn upon the Bush administration for arguing that the president's constitutional commander-in-chief powers superseded statutes that might limit his discretion. And so it is quite interesting to watch the Obama…

It is becoming increasingly hard to tell whether Obamacare is the law of the land, or just the law of the parts of the land that don’t reside in (or aren’t in the good graces of) the executive branch.  One wonders:  Is it really too much to expect an administration that championed the passage of a…

As an institution, the jury—especially in civil cases—is having a bad run these days. Nobody likes that summons in the mail (even though clerks-of-court in the electronic era have figured out ways to make jury service less of a hassle). Experts who monitor medical-legal issues scoff at the notion…

Democratic congressman Nick Rahall says he voted for the Keep Your Health Plan Act because President Obama's Obamacare fix lacked the "legal underpinning" he believes is necessary:

Remember back (a few short weeks ago) when the Democrats were arguing that Obamacare was the law of the land, that it hadn’t been struck down by the Supreme Court (as if avoiding that ignominious fate by a razor-slim 5-4 vote were a selling point), and that Republicans—and the American people—just…

John McCormack reports on Twitter that a World War I Memorial is closed due to the federal government shutdown. However, a sign posted by the National Park Service says that despite the memorial's closure, there is an exception "for 1st Amendment activities."

Adam J. White, writing for AEI:

Timed to coincide with the annual Walter Berns lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, which is in turn timed to coincide with Constitution Day (September 17), there's a new website honoring Walter Berns: walterberns.org.

Michael Zuckert of the University of Notre Dame will give the Constitution Day lecture at AEI. Details:

On the cusp of the July 4 holiday weekend, President Obama quietly announced (via an underling’s blog post) that he had unilaterally chosen to delay Obamacare’s employer mandate—its requirement that businesses with 50 or more workers provide federally approved health insurance. Obama claims to…

There is a genre of books about politics written by ideologues on both sides of the divide. Their aim is to inform their fellow partisans about the misinformation, misdeeds, and malign intentions of the people on the other side, offering talking points to rally the troops for the next…

Senator John Cornyn, as well as all other 44 Republicans in the Senate, introduced the balanced budget consitutional amendment today in the Senate.

On Friday, a 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously declared President Obama’s “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to be unconstitutional. The judges rebuked Obama both because the Senate was actually in session when he made the…

Republican senator Ted Cruz of Texas said Thursday that Barack Obama is "high on his own power" with regard to the president's announced efforts on gun control. Speaking on Laura Ingraham's radio talk show, Cruz, who was just elected to the Senate last November, said "this is a president who has…

Yesterday, Congress passed a series of bills to promote gun control and mental health.  Among other things, the bills aim to remove “unnecessary legal barriers…that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system,” to “give law enforcement the ability to run a…

Matthew Continetti reviews Larry P. Arnn's The Founders' Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It in the Claremont Review of Books:

Over at National Review Online, George Mason law professor Eric R. Claeys has a very interesting and lengthy piece on how constitutionalists should view Obamacare after the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the law:

It was perhaps inevitable that our Fourth of July celebrations last week might have seemed anti-climactic after the four-day festivities a month ago accompanying the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Fireworks, however spectacular, cannot compare with the thousand-boat flotilla on the Thames cheered on by…

Two days after the Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling on President Obama’s signature legislation, the president delivered his weekly radio address and didn’t utter one word about Obamacare or the ruling.

In September 2009, President Obama disagreed vehemently with the notion that the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate was a tax: "A responsibility to get health insurance is not a tax increase," he told George Stephanopolous. And even on the eve of oral argument, the president's Office of…

C. Boyden Gray and Jim R. Purcell, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

The New York Times gushingly describes how President Obama’s unique background — he’s “a man from many worlds,” “a transcender of tribes,” and, yes, “a former constitutional law professor” — has allowed him to unearth a creative “middle way” on the question of redefining marriage.  That “middle…

As Ronald Reagan famously quipped, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I'm here to help.’” Portland, Oregon, though, really is here to help. The problem is that the city hasn’t created laws to benefit Portlanders—it’s created them to benefit one…

Last week, a federal judge in Washington issued a truly extraordinary opinion. Judge Janice Rogers Brown, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, went out of her way to challenge one of bedrock achievements of the 20th Century liberal legal establishment: the de-emphasis of economic…

In light of the bruising that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli took during this week's oral arguments, no one can blame Obamacare's supporters for trying to offer (belatedly) winning answers that the government’s attorney lacked. Two of the early entrants are law professors Akhil Amar and Jeffrey…

After Tuesday's oral arguments, in which Justice Kennedy posed pleasantly tough questions to Solicitor General Verrilli, it was hard for conservatives not to get excited about the prospects for an imminent Supreme Court decision striking down the individual mandate.

The Washington Post editorial board essentially writes that, because Obamacare is good policy (in the editors’ estimation), and because it would involve the economy, it must also be constitutional.  Here is the Post’s argument, in its entirety: 

As is becoming increasingly clear, the legislation that was the principal cause of the Democrats’ historic defeat in 2010 isn’t getting any more popular as President Obama heads toward his day of accountability to the American citizenry. Four days before the 2-year anniversary of when Obama signed…

A newly released USA Today/Gallup poll shows that, by a margin of 13 percentage points (53 to 40 percent), swing-state voters want Obamacare to be repealed.  The poll included registered voters in 12 key states:  Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, New…

It’s rare to have a governing philosophy that usually hides behind a carefully constructed rhetorical justification be laid bare for all the world to see, but that’s exactly what happened when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently shared her thoughts about the document that she’s duty-bound to…

Lexington, S.C.

Normally, the Constitution requires the president to secure Senate confirmation before appointing cabinet secretaries and equivalent officers to lead federal agencies. But the Constitution carved out one exception to that rule: The president may appoint such an officer without Senate confirmation…

The House of Representatives voted down a proposed balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, the Associated Press reports. The House did not achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to pass the amendment and send it to the Senate.

A new Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that 74 percent of independents reject President Obama’s contention that (in the question’s wording) “the federal government [has] the constitutional authority to force everyone to buy health insurance.”  Only 18 percent concur with Obama’s reading of the…

The majority of the 50 states claim that Obamacare is unconstitutional, the Obama administration claims that it's not, and both sides have now asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the question on appeal from a 3-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court. In August, the panel (made up of two Clinton…

On September 17, 1787, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and 36 other Constitutional Convention delegates completed four months of labors at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall and signed the glorious document that, upon its ratification, would become the Constitution of the United…

Michele Bachmann knows that the Constitution prohibits the states from imposing health-insurance mandates.  She just doesn't know what part of the Constitution does this.  But she's open to suggestions. 

Rick Perry's constitutional views are again sparking controversy. As Ruth Marcus notes, Perry previously called for a constitutional amendment to empower Congress to overturn Supreme Court decisions by two-thirds votes.

Philip Klein reports: 

NPR reports, “Former President Bill Clinton said if faced with default, he would single-handedly raise the debt ceiling using the 14th Amendment and he’d do it ‘without hesitation, and force the courts to stop me.’”

Well, you don't see this every day -- Olympia Snowe and Jim DeMint have teamed up to produce this Wall Street Journal op-ed about the need for a balanced budget amendment:

Time magazine is nothing if not direct. Featuring a picture of the Constitution, the bottom half of which has been run through a shredder, today’s cover asks: “Does it Still Matter?”

On Monday, in the case of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the Supreme Court struck down a California law prohibiting the sale of violent video games to children. In a 7-2 holding authored by Justice Antonin Scalia (with Justices Alito and Roberts concurring and Justices Thomas and…

As military operations continue in Libya without formal congressional authorization, the debate about presidential war powers has resumed. Last week, former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton jumped into the fray, writing a Washington Post op-ed calling for…

Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield reviews Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule's The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic in the New York Times:

In September 1787, the Constitution was submitted to the states for ratification. The Pennsylvania Assembly met to pass legislation creating a convention that would decide if the state should sign on to the newly reconceived United States. But something was missing: a quorum. Several…

President Obama has now decided that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional. Thus, the Obama administration says that it will no longer defend that federal law in court. On the campaign trail, President Obama repeatedly…

Mike Lee, a former Supreme Court clerk for Justice Alito, is an experienced appellate litigator. (He’s the son of President Reagan's legendary solicitor general, Rex Lee, no less.) Lee also served the federal government as an assistant U.S. attorney, and the state government of Utah as Governor Jon…

Charles Krauthammer writes in the Washington Post:

For days, Democrats have made clear their displeasure with the Republican leadership's decision to begin the new House term with a reading of the U.S. Constitution. But Democrats' specific grievance, immediately before the reading commenced, was a surprise: Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and…

According to an editorial in the New York Sun, the 112 Congress will begin with a reading of the Constitution. As the editorial says, "It will be a fitting capstone to an election in which the cry of constitutional conservatism was heard throughout the land." The Sun urges members of Congress to…

The New York Times reports that incoming House majority leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) and legislative leaders in 12 states are backing a repeal amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The proposed amendment, launched by Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett, would empower two-thirds of the states,…

Yesterday's ruling by a federal district judge, declaring that Obamacare's individual mandate is unconstitutional, is a noteworthy blow to the highly unpopular overhaul and its ultimate prospects for survival. The New York Times writes:

In a short essay, New York Times editorialist Lincoln Caplan considers the increasingly popular conservative rallying cry, "constitutional conservatism." Caplan unsurprisingly tries to characterize the term as purely negative: "The phrase is used mainly in opposition," a response to perceived…

Anyone who proposed even a decade ago that a state should be permitted to file for bankruptcy would have been dismissed as crazy. But times have changed. As Arnold Schwarze-negger’s plea for $7 billion of federal assistance for California earlier this year made clear, the states are the next…