Free Republic

I won't pretend to be surprised by this, but Senate Democrats, knowing they don't have the power to stop Judge Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation to the Supreme Court, have turned the confirmation hearings into a campaign platform to smear President Donald Trump. The Democrats' approach to the hearings illustrates how disingenuous their professed commitment to preserve the integrity of "our democracy" is. Indeed, nothing better illustrates their failure to distinguish between a democracy and a constitutional republic than their misguided judicial philosophy. The framers of our Constitution designed our system as a constitutional republic, not a democracy. As students of...

The Bundy stand-off in Nevada has induced several people to ask me about the extent to which the federal government can own land, at least under the Constitution’s intended meaning. As it happens, in 2005 I studied the issue in depth, and published the following article: Federal Land Retention and the Constitution’s Property Clause: The Original Understanding, 76 U. Colo. L. Rev. 327 (2005). In a nutshell, here’s what I found: (1) Most commentators on the issue have staked out one of two polar positions. One position, which is current U.S. Supreme Court doctrine, is that the federal government may...