Sublime

“Our Constitution is color-blind,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Harlan proclaimed in his dissent to Plessy v. Ferguson, the case that legalized Jim Crow segregation in 1896. “The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country,” Justice Harlan went on. “I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its g

And the constitutional architecture they crafted was based on a rational system of checks and balances to guard against the possibility, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, of “a man unprincipled in private life” and “bold in his temper” one day arising who might “mount the hobby horse of popularity” and “flatter and fall in with all the non sense

Harriman was a truly remarkable man, one of the most brilliant railroaders and formidable capitalists in American history, whose genius has been somewhat masked behind a partially deserved reputation for shady dealing.

members of one chamber, and of dissolving the other at his pleasure; whereas the President of the United States has no share in the formation of the legislative body, and cannot dissolve any part of it. The King has the same right of bringing forward measures as the Chambers; a right which the President does not possess.

Indeed, I will argue that liberty in the broad sense requires judges and officials, when applying legal principles, to assert norms of reasonableness. Otherwise, self-interested people will use law to claim almost anything.

“The use of the Senate,” Madison said, “is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch.” It should, he said, be “an anchor against popular fluctuations.”

It can only interfere when the conduct of a magistrate is specially brought under its notice; and this is the delicate part of the system. The Americans of New England are unacquainted with the office of public prosecutor in the Court of Sessions, *a and it may readily be perceived that it could not have been established without difficulty.

It’s not clear whether Lincoln recalled, or even had read, Adams’s message to Congress in 1825. Both shared, though, this central point: that “liberty is power,” and that “the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must in proportion to its numbers be the most powerful nation upon earth.”87 To that end, Lincoln

The most crucial right established under Magna Carta was the right to a trial by jury. For centuries, guilt or innocence had been determined, across Europe, either by a trial by ordeal—a trial by water, for instance, or a trial by fire—or by trial by combat.