Constitution

The Fundamentals The Founders did not think about your rights as something the Government gives you. How they thought about rights is expressed across debates, letters, and even our Declaration of Independence (not a legally binding document, but illuminating none-the-less). Most people today think the Government gives us our rights. It’s probably taught this way in many schools across the US. “The 1st Amendment gives you the right to free speech…” ...

Abortion, Citizenship, and the Constitution: Why State Abortion Bans May Violate Federal Authority Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), states have regained the authority to regulate or ban abortion. But a novel constitutional argument suggests that in doing so, states may be intruding into a domain reserved exclusively to the federal government: the creation of U.S. citizens. This post outlines a constitutional theory that reframes state-enforced birth as a form of compelled citizenship creation, raising serious questions about federal supremacy, naturalization, and the limits of state power under the U.S. Constitution. ...

What are rights in America? We discuss the rights of people in America more than in any other country on Earth, it seems. But this conversation is almost instantly muddied because people use different definitions for what rights are. This leads to people on both sides of the aisle simply talking past each other. In particular, the conversation about what rights people have is doubly-muddied once the American Constitution and Bill of Rights are thrown into the mix. ...