The Constitutional Studies Center combines careful, objective scholarship into the original understanding of the Constitution with advocacy for human freedom under law. It produces books, issue papers, articles, and legal briefs reporting the results of its research. Since 2010, the Center has had enormous influence on constitutional law cases and commentary, but also on policy makers and grass roots activists. For example, the Center’s research findings galvanized the massive and growing “Article V” movement to restore constitutional limits on the federal government.
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Corrective Constitutional Amendments?0
- March 20, 2011
“A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might even risque the loss of that part of the constitution which it wished most religiously to preserve.” – Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), in 2 Select Works of Edmund Burke 108
READ MOREThe U.S. Budget Situation is Worse than Even You Imagined0
- March 12, 2011
Last week, Senator John Kerry (D.-Mass) was unhappy with a Republican plan to cut as much as $61 billion out of the federal budget. “I think it’s an ideological, extremist, reckless statement,” Kerry said of the plan. I hadn’t kept up on all the numbers recently, so I took a look at President Obama’s 2012
READ MORESupreme Court’s New First Amendment Decision Unrelated to the First Amendment0
- March 3, 2011
Commentators and journalists sometimes describe the current U.S. Supreme Court as “conservative.” But that’s not true if your definition of a conservative justice is a traditional or “originalist” jurist—that is, one who applies the Constitution as the American people understood it when they adopted it. Consider, for example, the Court’s latest First Amendment case. The
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New paper summarizes rules for amending the Constitution0
- February 25, 2011
Our sister institution, The Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, Arizona has just published my paper, Amending the Constitution by Convention: Practical Guidance for Citizens and Policymakers. Using my prior research and new findings, it summarizes the rules you should use in drafting Article V applications, answering objections, heading off congressional interference, and so forth. As I’ve
READ MOREAmendments Convention: Answering Those Not-So-Tough Questions0
- February 19, 2011
Are you a state lawmaker or reform advocate challenged to answer “tough questions” about a Convention for Proposing Amendments? If so, here are some answers. Recently I traveled to Indianapolis to testify before the Indiana legislature. While there, I learned that opponents of an amendments convention are circulating questions about a convention, apparently designed to
READ MOREHow Can Congress Spend All that Money? – Part II0
- February 11, 2011
In my last post, I explained that Congress obtains authority to spend money from its enumerated powers. All of those powers inherently require some expenditures—at least to buy the pen and ink needed to write the laws. Some powers, such as the power to “maintain a Navy” (Art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 13) require expenditure
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Get the latest edition of the popular work, The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant. You can buy it in either hard copy or Kindle form here.
Contact
Rob Natelson, Senior Fellow, Constitutional Jurisprudence
Email: rob.natelson1@gmail.com
Phone: 303-279-6536, ext 114