Restoring the Lost Constitution

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randy E. Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Gravitational Force ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Commerce Clause ◽  
The People ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The One ◽  
Constitutional Legitimacy

The U.S. Constitution found in school textbooks and under glass in Washington is not the one enforced today by the Supreme Court. This book argues that since the nation's founding, but especially since the 1930s, the courts have been cutting holes in the original Constitution and its amendments to eliminate the parts that protect liberty from the power of government. From the Commerce Clause, to the Necessary and Proper Clause, to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, to the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court has rendered each of these provisions toothless. In the process, the written Constitution has been lost. This book establishes the original meaning of these lost clauses and offers a practical way to restore them to their central role in constraining government: adopting a “presumption of liberty” to give the benefit of the doubt to citizens when laws restrict their rightful exercises of liberty. It also provides a new, realistic and philosophically rigorous theory of constitutional legitimacy that justifies both interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning and, where that meaning is vague or open-ended, construing it so as to better protect the rights retained by the people. The book disputes the conventional wisdom, posing a powerful challenge to which others must now respond. This updated edition features an afterword with further reflections on individual popular sovereignty, originalist interpretation, judicial engagement, and the gravitational force that original meaning has exerted on the Supreme Court in several recent cases.

Why Care What the Constitution Says?

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randy E. Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Police Power ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Commerce Clause ◽  
Ninth Amendment ◽  
Constitutional Legitimacy ◽  
The U.S

This book examines whether the U.S. Constitution—either as written or as actually applied—is legitimate. It argues that the most commonly held view of constitutional legitimacy—the “consent of the governed”—is wrong because it is a standard that no constitution can meet. It shows why holding the Constitution to this unattainable ideal both undermines its legitimacy and allows others to substitute their own meaning for that of the text. The book considers the notion of “natural rights” as “liberty rights,” along with the nature and scope of the so-called police power of states. Furthermore, it analyzes the original meaning of key provisions of the text that have been either distorted or excised entirely from the judges' Constitution and ignored: the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause in the original Constitution, the Ninth Amendment, and the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Restoring the Lost Constitution

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randy E. Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The One ◽  
Ninth Amendment

This concluding chapter argues that the original meaning of the entire Constitution, as amended, is much more libertarian than the one selectively enforced by the Supreme Court. It cites the evidence of original meaning presented in this book; for example, the “privileges or immunities” of citizens included natural rights as well as rights created by the adoption of the Bill of Rights. The term “commerce” unquestionably meant trade or exchange and did not extend to such other vital economic activities as manufacturing or agriculture. The “judicial power” included the power of to nullify unconstitutional statutes. The Ninth Amendment mandates that unenumerated rights shall not be denied or disparaged. The chapter asserts that attempts to perfect the Constitution by judicial construction conflict with and override its original meaning. It ends by insisting that the opportunity still exists to adopt a Presumption of Liberty and restore the lost Constitution.

Natural Rights as Liberty Rights: Retained Rights, Privileges, or Immunities

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randy E. Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Alternative Path ◽  
The People ◽  
We The People ◽  
Constitutional Legitimacy

This chapter examines the conception of rights held by the people who wrote and adopted the original Constitution and also by those who wrote and adopted the Fourteenth Amendment. If the framers held certain views of rights, their conception of rights was correct, and if they incorporated effective procedural protections of these rights into the Constitution, then the laws that are produced by this constitutional process will be binding in conscience. The terms “rights,” “liberties,” “privileges,” and “immunities” were often used interchangeably or in a cluster. The chapter analyzes the founders' view of natural rights as liberty rights as well as their universal belief in popular sovereignty. It argues that those who subscribe to the fiction of “We the People” precisely because they reject the reality of natural rights and can see no alternative path to constitutional legitimacy are wrong on both counts.

Constitutional Law in 1909-1910: The Constitutional Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1909

1910 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-497
Author(s):  
Eugene Wambaugh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Successful Attempt ◽  
Commerce Clause ◽  
State Statutes ◽  
The Supreme Court

It is indeed a substantial grist that the Supreme Court of the United States at the last term of court has ground for students of political science. The first opinion was delivered on November 1, 1909, and the last on May 31, 1910, and the court decided no less than sixty-five constitutional cases. Notice that with caution it is merely said that the court decided no less than that number; for it is often somewhat a matter of opinion whether a case should be classed as constitutional, and it may well be that there are readers who will find that the court exceeded sixty-five. And how were those sixty-five divided? Many turned on more constitutional points than one, and thus an enumeration of the cases bearing on the several clauses of the Constitution will reveal a total exceeding sixty-five. The enumeration, subject to amendment in accordance with each student's views, gives the following results: The Fourteenth Amendment, twenty-four cases; the Commerce Clause, twenty-one; the Obligation of Contracts Clause, eight; whether cases arise “under the laws of the United States,” eight; Full Faith and Credit Clause, five; and sixteen other clauses, from one to four cases each, aggregating twenty-seven.Through these dull figures some important facts shine distinctly. The Fourteenth Amendment and the Commerce Clause clearly took a vast part of the court's energy, and each of these provisions has to do with the curtailment of functions which prima facie belong to the several states. In other words, the chief feature of this term, as of every recent term, has been a more or less successful attempt of litigants to overthrow state statutes as denials of due process and equal protection or as interferences with interstate commerce.

scholarly journals The Supreme Courts Decision On The Affordable Care Act: Abrogating Article III Of The Constitution

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-84
Author(s):  
Martin D. Carrigan
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
The United States ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Chief Justice ◽  
Commerce Clause ◽  
The People ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Law ◽  
The U.S

In National Federation of Independent Business v. Katherine Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Case No. 11393, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed most of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA). In holding the ACA as valid (constitutional), Chief Justice Roberts reasoned that the taxing power in the U.S. Constitution was the reason that the law was enforceable. Although a strong dissent on such reasoning was written by four other Justices, Roberts also wrote that laws are entrusted to our nations elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. [1]Roberts also wrote that the Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution did not give Congress authority to pass the ACA. Moreover, Congress could not impose unfunded mandates on the States to expand Medicaid. In so writing, Roberts disposed of the chief arguments of those in favor of the law and provided a bone to those who opposed it. But, by then holding that Congress taxing power was sufficient to uphold the law, Roberts ignored the Federal Anti-Injunction statute and called into question the ability of the Supreme Court to hold a law passed by Congress entirely unconstitutional. By writing that, in effect, the Court should defer to Acts of Congress, Roberts attempted a finesse first exercised by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison in 1803. While it may seem as if he intended to demonstrate the same legal adroitness of Marbury, instead he deferred to the wishes of Congress, going through legal gymnastics to uphold a law that many scholars saw as indefensible, and damaged the power of the Supreme Court given to it in Article III immeasurably.

We the People: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court

2000 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 98
Author(s):  
Michelle Donaldson Deardorff ◽  
Michael J. Perry
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
The People ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
We The People

scholarly journals Insurance related problems in bareboat charter agreements

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Albano Gilabert Gascón
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Insurance Contract ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The One ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn 2017, the majority of the United Kingdom Supreme Court held in its judgment in the Gard Marine and Energy v China National Chartering (The Ocean Victory) case that, in bareboat charters under the ‘BARECON 89’ form, if both the owner and the charterer are jointly insured under a hull policy, the damages caused to the vessel by the charterer cannot be claimed by the insurer by way of subrogation after indemnifying the owner. The interpretation of the charter party leads to the conclusion that the liability between the parties is excluded. Faced with the Supreme Court’s decision, the Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO) adopted a new standard bareboat charter agreement only a few months later, the ‘BARECON 2017’ form, which amends, among other clauses, the one related to insurance. The present paper analyses (i) the new wording of the clause mentioned above and (ii) its incidence on the relationship between the parties of both the charter agreement and the insurance contract and its consequences for possible third parties. Despite BIMCO’s attempt to change the solution adopted by the Supreme Court and his willingness to allow the insurer to claim in subrogation against the person who causes the loss, the consequences, as it will be seen, do not differ much in practice when the wrongdoer is the co-insured charterer. On the contrary, when the loss is caused by a time charter or a sub-charter, in principle, there will be no impediment for the insurer to sue him.

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