Had those compromises not been made at the Constitutional Convention, the Southern states would not have agreed. We might have bumped along under the Articles of Confederation for a few more years, but ultimately at least two countries probably would have emerged and some states may have just gone their own way. Compromise is a messy business, but it kept the country together for the time being.
My sense is slavery would have gradually ended, what with the European countries with American colonies ending the practice. But the stupendous wealth of the cotton trade corrupted minds that might have been more open to ending the practice eventually. Thank you, Eli.
In my opinion, the practice of judicial review is not the problem, but how some courts have used it. I am definitely pleased to see an originalist like Judge Gorsuch nominated.
True. Maybe the only thing that kept us together was the fear of encirclement by Britain and France, and that we would be dismembered and carved up by them. Madison argued this in Federalist something or other...
My sense is slavery would have gradually ended...Thank you, Eli.
Also agreed. The cotton boom, made possible by Whitney's cotton gin, extended and expanded the practice of slavery. But as far as Whitney goes, it was a double whammy. Most people think the cotton gin caused the economic basis of the Civil War, but overlook his invention of interchageable parts. While the cotton gin made the South an agricultural slave superpower, interchangeable parts made possible the industrial revolution in the North. The two inventions drove the nation into two polarized economies.
In my opinion, the practice of judicial review is not the problem, but how some courts have used it.
I distinguish the broader concept of Judicial Review from its more dangerous subtype, Substantive Due Process. Judicial review can be narrowly applied to only declare invalid the acts of the government when they are contrary to the Constitution. Other than Dred Scott, which created a "right" of slavery, most early Judicial Review cases fell under this doctrine. Judicial Review can also be expanded to include Substantive Due Process which is the creation and enforcement of made up "rights" not found in the Constitution. This doctrine was born in the 1897 cases of Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad v. City of Chicago, which selectively incorporated the 5th Amendment Takings Clause against the states, and Allgeyer v. Louisiana, which recognized a "freedom of contract."
As Judge Gorsuch has written, the worst aspect of Substantive Due Process is that in creating the "right," the Court is chiseling it in stone into the Constitution, and the public policy debate over whether that right should be honored is never allowed to take place. This makes the Court a political policy-making organ of government. When it assumed this role, primarily as a result of Roe v. Wade, membership on that Court ceased being a judicial question and became a political one.
We will see this play out in Judge Gorsuch's nomination.