Essays
Judgment / October 21, 2026
There is a quiet constitutional coup that unfolds every time a president signs a bill and then issues a statement claiming the right to ignore or...
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The Constitution's appointment process is two steps. The President nominates. The Senate gives or withholds its advice and consent. That's it. There is no...
Try this thought experiment on for size. Take the greatest political argument ever written in America, The Federalist Papers, and imagine Hamilton, Madison...
There is a peculiar ritual in American politics that should trouble anyone who takes the Declaration of Independence seriously. Every two years, after the...
Here is a sentence that should make every American stop and read twice: the most consequential central-planning document in Washington is not an executive...
When Congress ended the House page program in 2011, most Americans had no idea it still existed. That was part of the problem. For almost two centuries, the...
Most Americans hear the words "special rule" and picture a musty procedural footnote. That is the first mistake. The special rule is not a detail of how the...
Every few years Washington stages the same constitutional drama. A president invokes executive privilege. Congressional committees rattle subpoenas. Legal...
The Constitution gives the president the power to nominate federal judges. It gives the Senate the power to accept or reject those nominees. What it does...
The Necessary and Proper Clause is the quiet workhorse of the modern administrative state. We spend enormous energy arguing about the Commerce Clause, the...