Tenth Amendment Center

The arguments against the power of the states to arrest federal tyranny are as predictable as the sun coming up in the morning, and they generally start with Marbury.

Richard Epstein has, in How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution, defied the current scholarly consensus.

If asked, who has the final say in our government on the meaning of the Constitution, most people would say, the Supreme Court, but it this right?

To understand the debate in this topic, it helps to briefly review constitutional history. When the Constitution was first proposed, opponents of the new document criticized it for lacking a bill of enumerated rights, which were common in virtually every state constitution of the time.

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s comment at Duke Law School that the U.S. Court of Appeals “makes policy” has received a lot of attention, and deservedly so. Understanding what prompted her remark is key to understanding what has happened to our Constitution in the modern era.

If one wants a nearly thorough education about the U.S. Constitution, it would be wise to examine the following: the notes from the Constitutional Convention, the public editorials written both for and against the proposed Constitution that followed, the state ratification debates, and the actual document itself.