Free Republic

Over the past five years, common good constitutionalism has taken tenuous root in elite legal academia. It’s now beginning to find its way into courtrooms. But scholars remain divided on its potential to reshape the legal landscape — and whose “common good” it seeks to advance. ***************************************************************** On March 31, 2020, when the United States was on Covid-19 lockdown, The Atlantic published “Beyond Originalism,” a cerebral essay by the Harvard Law professor C. Adrian C. Vermeule ’90. The essay urges legal conservatives to abandon originalism, the dominant school of constitutional interpretation for the conservative legal movement, which posits that the...

Trump is all about political theatre, or circus, and it often seems that even in resisting him, as decent citizens must do, we become part of the circus too. We are like the extras who splutter while he thrills the base by violating some heretofore inviolate human norm. So the show goes on. But why not put on our own show, our own form of political theatre, that leaves Trump out – or at least has a different focus? We could consider the kind of political theatre that Americans created from 1768 to 1776 to resist Britain’s growing crackdown. Instead...

Is the U.S. Constitution worth preserving? Of course it is. Is it worth defending, even at the cost of life and limb? Of course it is. Is it worth distributing to young and old, including in our schools? Of course it is. Well, actually, not everybody agrees with that last part. Here is a two-year-old story that somehow escaped wide attention. It’s still relevant today because many of our elites likewise have a low view of the Constitution. The essence of the story is this: In a liberal school board in Texas two Septembers ago, attempts to distribute pocket copies...

The federal case against Gabriel Metcalf in Billings, Montana, under the federal Gun Free School Zone Act of 1990 (GFSZ), has been resolved in Metcalf’s favor. In a split decision, the three-judge panel on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ordered the case remanded to the district court and has ordered the case dismissed. From the Summary by Judge VanDyke (purchased on PACER account): The panel reversed the district court’s order denying Gabriel Cowan Metcalf’s motion to dismiss an indictment charging him with possessing firearms within 1,000 feet of a school in violation of the Gun-Free School...

The Donald Trump administration Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed an amicus brief defending rights protected by the Second Amendment in the consolidated case to be heard in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The case is ASSOCIATION OF NEW JERSEY RIFLE AND PISTOL CLUBS, INC., et al., v. ATTORNEY GENERAL NEW JERSEY, et al.This case is one of the best candidates for courts to make clear that bans on semi-automatic rifles and magazines that hold more than ten rounds are unconstitutional and in conflict with the Second Amendment.The Trump DOJ was not asked to submit...

(Sep. 27, 2025) — Vattel’s legal treatise was mentioned in communications between John Jay and others during the revolution and founding and framing time period. Vattel’s legal treatise was a very important guiding light and legal reference to the Founders and Framers in the justifying the revolution, the founding of our nation, the writing and framing of our founding documents, and in the establishment of our new U.S. Federal Government’s “Common Law” via subsequent U.S. Supreme Court Decisions, especially regarding U.S. citizenship. John Jay became the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. I have often wondered if the...

The decision, which hinges on an exception to the Gun-Free School Zones Act, does not say whether that law is consistent with the Second Amendment. A couple of years ago, Gabriel Metcalf was charged with a federal felony because he stepped onto the sidewalk in front of his house in Billings, Montana, while holding a shotgun. Metcalf, who had armed himself because of a dispute with a neighbor who was subject to a restraining order, was not violating state law. But because Metcalf lives across the street from an elementary school, prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District...

The country’s impending 250th birthday provides myriad opportunities for Americans to gather, ponder, and reflect on the nation’s history and the principles that have enabled American greatness. As part of that effort, the National Archives in Washington has, for the first time in that history, allowed ordinary Americans to read the entire original version of the nation’s founding document. For two weeks — from Sept. 16 through Oct. 1 — the entire Constitution is on public display. Visitors to our nation’s capital from across the country and around the world can view these priceless documents and, in doing so, hopefully...

(Sep. 20, 2025) — Recently, I was advised by a fellow Texan, who supported an ineligible candidate for POTUS, that: “In order for your argument to have any merit at all, you must provide evidence that the authors of the Constitution intended that there be some class of persons who are born a citizen but are not natural born citizens. You could do that from their writing or from legal sources at the time, but you must prove that precise point, or you might as well be clucking like a chicken.” I wish to invite them and all other supporters...

Old America knew instinctively what our founders had declared: liberty is precious, but it cannot endure untethered. Freedom must be fastened to virtue, or else it curdles into license. John Adams once warned that the Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people, and that it was wholly inadequate for any other. He knew what we seem to have forgotten. --- snip This fracture is not merely political. It is spiritual. And at the heart of it, I suspect, lies our rejection of the faith that once anchored us. Christianity, whatever one thinks of its theology, gave this...

(Sep. 17, 2025) — During the process of developing the U.S. Constitution Alexander Hamilton submitted a suggested draft for a Constitution on June 18, 1787. At some point, he also suggested to the framers a proposal for the qualification requirements in Article II as to the necessary Citizenship status for the office of President and Commander in Chief of the Military. Another version of Hamilton’s proposed Constitution and which principles were stated during the convention’s deliberations per Madison notes and journal (see work of Farrand – pg 619), was given to Madison near the close of the convention for inclusion...

The triumph of the Convention of 1787 is that in raising a standard to which the wise and honest could repair, it also raised one that met the threefold test of legitimacy, popularity, and viability.One reason the Convention was able to strike the right balance between the urge to lead the people and the need to obey them, and between the urge to be noble and the need to be practical, was the disposition of most delegates to be “whole men” on stern principles and “halfway men” on negotiable details. Another was the way in which it worked with familiar...

Did Charlie Kirk say it is acceptable for people to die so we can have guns? Of course not. He actually gave a highly reasonable speech on the necessity of the right to keep and bear arms. We have seen an insane number of people commenting that it is perfectly fine and even wonderful that Charlie Kirk was assassinated because he justified gun violence. First of all, it is not right to laugh and dance about the murder of a young father in any case, but especially not in this case, when leftists are as usual grossly misrepresenting what he...

John Adams, in his retirement, was disheartened. What had his life in politics counted for? he wondered. The renewal in 1805 of a 30-year friendship with Doctor Benjamin Rush reinvigorated him. ... In one conversation about the “perfectibility of man” and religion’s role in making “men and nations happy,” both Rush and Adams lamented the moral decay they witnessed in the world around them. “By renouncing the Bible,” Rush interjected, “philosophers swing from their moorings upon all moral Subjects. . . . It is the only correct map of the human heart that ever has been published. It contains a...

(Sep. 12, 2025) — Introduction As the “birthright citizenship” issue strolls its way through the lower federal courts, its related “kissing cousin” issue – the “natural born Citizen” (“nbC”) presidential eligibility restriction – remains on a back burner, simmering in a pot of widespread electorate, academic and media indifference. Happily, one of the few Internet sites where these issues are not treated so casually is the one you are now visiting: The Post & Email. To that point, two recent federal appellate court decisions may play a significant role in again bringing the nbC issue to a front, instead of...

A Florida state appeals court ruled that the state's ban on openly carrying firearms is unconstitutional. The ruling from the 1st District Court of Appeal, citing U.S. Supreme Court decisions on Second Amendment rights, found the open-carry ban incompatible with the Second Amendment

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia, in a hearing on Wednesday, told the room: The notion that rights don't come from laws, and don't come from the government, but come from the Creator... That's what the Iranian government believes... So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.

An Alaska man is petitioning the Supreme Court to consider whether the government's seizure of his $95,000 plane for transporting an illicit six-pack of beer is an excessive fine under the Eighth Amendment. The Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, filed a petition for writ of certiorari today on behalf of Ken Jouppi, an 82-year-old Alaskan bush pilot, asking the Supreme Court to rule on whether states should consider the gravity of a defendant's specific offense, rather than an abstract view of the general crime. Jouppi was convicted of a misdemeanor in 2012 when state troopers searched his...

The Supreme Court has already expanded President Donald Trump’s authority in a string of emergency rulings, but he’s signaling in his firing of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and other issues likely headed to the court that he continues to seek broader powers for the executive branch. The cases could serve as major tests of how much further the nation’s high court is willing to go to bless the president’s assertion of executive authority. They differ from previous showdowns because of the sheer magnitude of the authority Trump is seeking to wield and because he wants greater control over powers...

I noticed some time ago that LV didn't have any works by Noah Webster, creator of that dictionary. Well, now they have one. https://librivox.org/examination-of-the-federal-constitution-by-noah-webster/