Essays

Berns on Bork: Distinguished Scholar, Dear Friend

– American Enterprise Institute, December 19, 2012.
Bob Bork was a distinguished legal scholar, judge, teacher, and dear friend to his associates here at AEI.  He was also a Marine who fought in Korea.  He lost his first wife and mother of his three children, Claire, and his closest friend and Yale Law… More

Natural Rights and Modern Constitutionalism

– Walter Berns, "Natural Rights and Modern Constitutionalism," Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism, a web resource of the Witherspoon Institute.
Excerpt: The idea of constitutionalism is as old as political science, and its features are best described and defended by political philosophers. Aristotle, for example, first addressed the question of the best form of government and, after weighing all the… More

In Memoriam: Robert A. Goldwin

– AEI Online, January 21, 2010.
Excerpt: I begin with some personal reflections. I had something of a life before I knew Bob Goldwin. I had graduated from college, had played tournament tennis, and, for four years had, along with Bob, fought World War II. (We won it, incidentally.) My life… More

Interrogations and Presidential Prerogative

– Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2009.
Excerpt: Recently, an Episcopal church in Bethesda, Md., displayed a banner with the following words: “God bless everyone (no exceptions).” I confessed to the rector of my own church that, try as I might, I simply could not obey this injunction.… More

Why America Celebrates Lincoln

– Wall Street Journal, February 17, 2009.
Excerpt: Abraham Lincoln did great things, greater than anything done by Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt. He freed the slaves and saved the Union, and because he saved the Union he was able to free the slaves. Beyond this, however, our extraordinary… More

Lincoln at Two Hundred: Why We Still Read the Sixteenth President

– American Enterprise Institute, 2009.
Excerpt: More has been written about Abraham Lincoln than of any other president or, for that matter, any other American; the amount is prodigious: no fewer than 16,000 books and goodness knows how many journal articles. I cannot claim to have read more than… More

The Case for Keeping the Electoral College

– Roll Call, April 3, 2008.
Excerpt: Although national attention continues to focus on an especially riveting nomination contest, a consequential change to the Electoral College, the so-called National Popular Vote plan, continues to churn in the background with little fanfare or… More

On George Kateb’s Patriotism

– Cato Unbound, March 12, 2008.
Excerpt: Professor Kateb begins by defining patriotism as love of country; fair enough. He then distinguishes this love from that of a child’s for his parents, pointing out that, whereas a child is not likely to be asked to die for his parents,… More

Religion and the Death Penalty

– Weekly Standard, February 4, 2008.
Excerpt: The best case for the death penalty–or, at least, the best explanation of it–was made, paradoxically, by one of the most famous of its opponents, Albert Camus, the French novelist. Others complained of the alleged unusual cruelty of the… More

Outputs: The Electoral College Produces Presidents

– Securing Democracy: Why We Have an Electoral College, Gary L. Gregg II, ed. (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2008).
The distinguished contributors to Securing Democracy—including Michael Barone, Walter Berns, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan—have an uncommonly complete understanding of the nature of American politics. They show that the American concept of democracy means… More

Patriotism and Multiculturalism

– The Many Faces of Patriotism, Philip Abbott, ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 3–14.
In the decades following the end of the Cold War, scholars turned their attention to reevaluating patriotism. Many saw both its ability to serve as a cohesive force and its desirability as a political and moral concept waning in a time of peace and… More

Remembering Herbert Storing

– In Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2006).
Almost thirty years have passed since Robert Goldwin called from Washington and said that Herbert Storing had died. I must have uttered a cry, because my wife, who was across the room, rose up startled; I then broke into tears. How else does one hear the news… More

Under God

– In Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: On March 24, 2004, the Supreme Court heard arguments in still another of what civil libertarians insist on calling establishment-of-religion cases, Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow. While the previous cases dealt with school prayers, for… More

Sticks and Stones?

– Commentary, June 2005.
Excerpt: In 1925, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, and in some circles became famous for saying, “if, in the long run, the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces in the community, the only meaning… More

Religion and the Death Penalty

– Speech delivered at Harvard Law School, September 17, 2004; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: The best case for the death penalty—or, at least, the best explanation of it—was made, paradoxically, by one of the most famous of its opponents, Albert Camus, the French novelist, playwright, and World War II Resistance hero. Others complained… More

Recipes for Anarchy

– Washington Post, July 16, 2004.
In his column [“The Right Plan for Iraqi Voters,” op-ed, July 6] Andrew Reynolds makes much of what advocates see as the chief merit of proportional representation–namely, a representative assembly that reflects the distribution of opinion… More

The Insignificant Office

– National Review Online, July 9, 2004; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Why should John Edwards or anyone else want to be vice president? One of the men who held the post spoke of it as “the most insignificant office” ever contrived by the wit of man, and the men who wittingly contrived it I mean, of course,… More

The Libertarian Dodge

– Claremont Review of Books, September 2003; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: There is a question as to why the Beacon Press would choose to publish this collection of Wendy Kaminer’s essays. It is not enough to say, as she does in a prefatory note, that “civil liberties are always in jeopardy and always require… More

The Perennial Trashing of Bourgeois Democracy

– Academic Questions 15:4 (September 1, 2002), 23–26; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: What began in nineteenth-century Britain as a serious critique of the new liberal democracy became, in twentieth-century America, a contemptuous “bourgeois bashing,” almost a way of life for some of campus radicals. But if not American… More

Mystic Chords of Memory: Cultivating America’s Unique Form of Patriotism

– The American Educator 26:1 (Spring 2002): 26–38; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Patriotism. The word itself comes from the Latin patria, meaning country. Patriotism implies a love of country, a readiness to sacrifice for it, perhaps even a willingness to give one’s life for it. This was well understood in the countries (or… More

Ancients and Moderns: The Emergence of Modern Constitutionalism

– Institute for the Study of the Americas, March 2002; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Walter Berns, John M. Olin University Professor emeritus at Georgetown University, investigates the history of modern constitutionalism or limited government. Particularly interested in the framing of the U.S. Constitution, Berns goes on to delve into various… More

James Madison on Religion and Politics

– James Madison and the Future of Limited Government, John Curtis Samples, ed. (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2002), 135–46.
Americans are once again rediscovering the wisdom of the founders who wrote and ratified the U.S. Constitution, which has stood the test of two centuries. James Madison’s efforts in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 earned him the reputation of… More

From the Ashes Comes the Rebirth of Patriotism

– AEI Online, October 1, 2001.
Excerpt: The terrorist attacks of September 11 have inspired a greater outpouring of patriotism by the American people than have many previous wars, and numerous displays of the American flag symbolize that patriotism. The flag represents more than free… More

Where Are the Death Penalty Critics Today?

– Wall Street Journal, July 11, 2001.
Excerpt: Timothy McVeigh’s execution today is noteworthy, coming as it does a “mere” six years since the bombing in Oklahoma City and three since he was convicted and sentenced; others like him have been on death row for 10, 12, or even 15… More

Two-and-a-Half Cheers for the Electoral College

– Ashbrook Center, April 2001; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Andy Warhol once said that everyone has fifteen minutes of fame during a lifetime—or, at least, is entitled to fifteen minutes of fame. His began when he painted his picture of a box of Brillo, or of a can of Campbell’s tomato soup, and lasted… More

Should the Current Electoral College System Be Preserved?

– Congressional Digest 80:1 (January 2001), 16.
Presents arguments in favor of preserving the Electoral College system of electing the president of the United States. American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Walter Berns; State University of New York at Cortland professor Judith Best; Harvard Law… More

Revisiting States’ Rights Controversy at the Wrong Time, with Altered History

– Washington Times, October 15, 2000; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Forrest McDonald is a reputable scholar. Early-American historians especially are indebted to him, not only f or his important study of the formation of the republic, and his celebrated biography of Alexander Hamilton, but because, in “We The… More

The Cultivation of Citizenship

– Public Morality, Civic Virtue, and the Problem of Modern Liberalism, T. William Boxx and Gary M. Quinlivan, eds. (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), reprinted in Citizens and Statesmen: An Annual Review of Political Theory and Public Life, James R. Harrigan, ed. (2006).
Liberalism, the central political philosophy of American and Western society, is a philosophy based on human freedom, equality, and the natural rights of individuals. Yet liberalism needs character-forming influences if it is to succeed. In light of the… More

Constitutionalism: Old and New

– The Liberal Tradition in Focus: Problems and New Perspectives, João Carlos Espada, Marc F. Plattner, and Adam Wolfson, eds. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000), 17–26.
The Liberal Tradition in Focus is a collection of essays by prominent scholars in their fields on the nature of liberalism at the close of the twentieth century. Using a variety of analytical and substantive approaches, the authors compare the “old… More

Alexis de Tocqueville

– The American Enterprise (November/December 1999).
Alexis de Tocqueville was born in France in 1805, the son of aristocrats. During the French Revolution, his parents had been imprisoned, and his mother’s father and grandfather had been executed. After the Restoration, King Louis XVIII recognized his… More

Martin Diamond’s Contribution to American Political Thought: Symposium

– The Political Science Reviewer 28:1 (Fall 1999).
Excerpt: Forgotten or neglected by politicians, the Constitution and its Framers did not fare much better in the academic world that Martin Diamond entered in the early 1950s. Political science departments offered courses in constitutional law, but, at that… More

Historians Spring an “October Surprise”

– Wall Street Journal, November 3, 1998.
Excerpt: In the runup to every election, politicians wait in hopeful or nervous expectation of the “October surprise” — a last-minute news bombshell that can turn the electoral tide. In 1980, Republicans feared that the Carter administration… More

My Days With Frieda Lawrence

– Commentary, August 1998; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: It was a lovely place, that ranch, near (but not at) the top of a mountain a few miles from Taos, New Mexico, and so inaccessible that no one was likely to come upon it inadvertently. My wife and I spent our honeymoon at the ranch in 1951, when… More

Covering Their Eyes With Parted Fingers

– New York Times, April 4, 1998.
Excerpt: I’ll confess I despise Bill Clinton and have for a long time, and I can’t get enough of this and my wife is disgusted with me. She doesn’t like Bill Clinton, but she thinks it’s a weakness of soul, as it undoubtedly is. I have… More

Why the Death Penalty Is Fair

– Wall Street Journal, January 9, 1998.
Excerpt: The death penalty is much in the news. With jurors failing to agree on a sentence for Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, he will escape the maximum legal punishment for his part in the deaths of eight federal agents (though an Oklahoma… More

Constitutionalism and Multiculturalism

– Multiculturalism and American Democracy, Arthur M. Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, and M. Richard Zinman, eds. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 91–111; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the 1830s, very much feared that liberty and equality would be at war with each other; today there is a tendency among some intellectuals to think that peace between them can be achieved by combining them under the… More

The Supreme Court as Republican Schoolmaster: Constitutional Interpretation and the ‘Genius of the People’

– The Supreme Court and American Constitutionalism, Bradford P. Wilson and Ken Masugi, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 3–16.
In this important book, fourteen of America’s leading constitutional scholars assess the Supreme Court’s performance expounding the animating principles of American constitutionalism. Essays devoted to fresh examination of the Supreme… More

Panel Discussion: The Death Penalty: A Philosophical Perspective

– John Marshall Law Review 30:463 (Winter 1997).
Excerpt: MR. RUEBNER: It is my pleasure to introduce Professor Spanbauer, who chairs today. She will introduce the moderator. MS. SPANBAUER: Thank you, Professor Ruebner. Professor Donald Beschle of The John Marshall Law School will serve as moderator for our… More

Clothes for Working Women–or Working Girls?

– Wall Street Journal, October 27, 1997.
Excerpt: On Oct. 8, The Wall Street Journal ran an article with the headline, “Will Working Women Wear This Stuff?” The “stuff” in question — “vixenish clothing” — may be appropriate in the boudoir or cocktail… More

Testimony of Walter Berns on the Electoral College

– Subcommittee Hearing on "Proposals for Electoral College Reform: H.J. Res. 28 and H.J. Res. 43," U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, September 4, 1997.
Excerpt: In 1981, I began an article The Wall Street Journal by pointing out that “where the Electoral College is concerned, nothing fails to succeed like success.” What was true then is true today. In 1996, as in 1980, the Electoral College… More

Is There a Worldwide Conservative Crackup?

– Weekly Standard, August 25, 1997.
Excerpt: Ask a conservative what he wants to conserve and he is likely to say ” freedom,” including the freedom to spend his own money; hence, his dislike of taxes. But ask the typical American (or British or French) voter the same question and… More

Clinton Lays an Egg

– Weekly Standard, July 7, 1997.
Excerpt: During the latter years of a teaching career extending over more than four decades, I became accustomed to university students who could not spell or punctuate and did not know the rudiments of English grammar and syntax. “Supersede,” I… More

Vengeance? Executing McVeigh Would Be Moral

– Washington Post, June 8, 1997.
Excerpt: Timothy McVeigh deserves to be punished. Almost all of us can agree on that, but does he deserve to be executed? The Denver jury has to answer that question, but the larger question is whether we are justified in imposing the death penalty on anyone,… More

Taking Virtue Seriously

– Public Interest 128 (Summer 1997), 122–26.
Excerpt: In 1790-91, Supreme Court Justice James Wilson delivered a series of lectures on the law at what was to become the University of Pennsylvania and before an audience that included President George Washington, Vice President John Adams, and a “galaxy… More

On the Future of Conservatism

– Commentary, February 1997.
Excerpt: Years ago (how many, I do not remember) I was on a panel with the late Russell Kirk, the doyen of the paleoconservatives, and sitting behind him when, at the podium, he outlined his plan for a Christian commonwealth. Rather rudely, I must admit, I… More

The Assault on the Universities: Then and Now

– Reassessing the Sixties: Debating the Political and Cultural Legacy, Stephen Macedo, ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997), 157–83; reprinted in Academic Questions 10:3 (Summer 1997); reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: The assault on the university began with the student revolt at the Berkeley campus of the University of California in December 1964. Berkeley was followed by Columbia in 1968, Harvard and Cornell in 1969, and Yale and Kent State in 1970; during this… More

Examining the Qualities That Make for Leadership

– Washington Times, September 22, 1996.
Excerpt: According to its publishers, “Hail to the Chief” is “essential reading for anyone concerned with the state of the Presidency – both its past and its future.” Robert Dallek, a prize-winning author of books on Franklin… More

On Patriotism

– Bradley Lecture, American Enterprise Institute, September 16, 1996.
Excerpt: Patriotism means love of country (patria, in the Latin) and implies a readiness to sacrifice for it, to fight for it, perhaps even to give one’s life for it. In the traditional, or Spartan, sense, patriots are those who love their country simply… More

Women: An Uncertain Fit for the Multicultural Movement?

– Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 19:3 (Spring 1996), 733.
Abstract: Women do not fit well into the model of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism involves groups asking for recognition based on their cultural identity. However, women do not constitute a distinct cultural group defined on the basis of historical… More

Marriage Anyone?

– First Things, April 1996.
Excerpt: Almost 70 percent of the American people have indicated their opposition to “same—sex” marriages (males with males, females with females), but neither they nor their elected representatives are likely to cast the decisive vote in this matter.… More

We Are the World?

– National Review, February 26, 1996.
Excerpt: One would never know from the list of celebrities attending the recent “State of the World Forum,” sponsored by the Gorbachev Foundation U.S.A., that there was a time when the subject of a new world order was addressed by serious… More

The Illegitimacy of Appeals to Natural Law in Constitutional Interpretation

– Natural Law, Liberalism, and Morality: Contemporary Essays, Robert P. George, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, 2001), 181–94; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: I begin by stating the obvious: Federal judges are not in the habit of invoking natural law to support their constitutional decisions. Rather, they invoke one or another—and sometimes a handful—of specific constitutional provisions. This is not… More

Peers and Peremptory Challenges

– Race and the Criminal Justice System: How Race Affects Jury Trials, Gerald A. Reynolds, ed. (Washington, DC: The Center for Equal Opportunity, 1996).
Abstract: An introductory paper notes that throughout most of American history a white-dominated justice system, including juries, has discriminated against black defendants, but today blacks are not only represented in the justice system, they also are in… More

Third Party Candidates Face a High Hurdle in the Electoral College

– The American Enterprise, January 1, 1996.
Excerpt: In the century and a half since the emergence of our current two-party system the United States has avoided any crisis in selecting a new president and vice-president–in part because the electoral college amplifies the margin of victory in the… More

The Great Emancipator

– Commentary, January 1996.
Excerpt: David Herbert Donald, a distinguished historian of the South and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for biography, is the Charles Warren Professor Emeritus of American History and American Civilization at Harvard. In recognition of his eminence,… More

Blue Movies

– Public Interest 119 (Summer 1995), 86–90; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Hollywood Censored,  we are told on the book’s dust jacket, examines how hundreds of films–Mae West comedies, serious dramas, and films with a social message–were censored and often edited to promote a conservative political agenda… More

Defunding the Humanities

– The American Enterprise, May 1, 1995.
Excerpt: I served on the National Council on the Humanities from 1982-88. My first exposure to the Endowment came in 1982 when, going through a list of proposals that had been approved before we had been appointed, Gertrude Himmelfarb and I came across an… More

Sue the Warden, Sue the Chef, Sue the Gardener . . .

– Wall Street Journal, April 24, 1995.
Excerpt: The Senate’s debate this week on tort reform will focus the public spotlight on frivolous lawsuits. Nowhere is this problem more pressing than in our prison system. As one federal appeals court judge said recently, filing civil rights suits… More

New Deal vs. Nine Old Men

– Wall Street Journal, March 16, 1995.
Excerpt: The story told by Frank Leuchtenburg in The Supreme Court Reborn: Constitutional Reform in the Age of Roosevelt (Oxford, 350 pages, $30) should be a familiar one, although it may not be. (Opinion surveys show that high-school students, among… More

Constitutional Interpretation in the Court’s First Decades

– Benchmarks: Great Constitutional Controversies in the Supreme Court, Terry Eastland, ed. (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1995), 1–12.
Leading professors and practitioners of the law offer compelling analyses of key constitutional controversies in the Supreme Court that have helped shape America’s legal and social systems. Includes an introduction by editor Terry Eastland and a… More

Dirty Words

– Public Interest 114 (Winter 1994), 119–25.
Excerpt: The world has never had a good definition of liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in need of one.” What Abraham Lincoln said in 1864 about liberty in general can be said today about liberty or (in the words of the First Amendment)… More

When Men Are the Prey of Women

– Washington Times, October 25, 1994.
Excerpt: In 1971, the Supreme Court told us that “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric,” but nowadays a man’s vulgarity is more likely to be seen as sexual harassment that — unlike flag-burning, another of the unsavory… More

The Prattling Presidency

– Wall Street Journal, October 13, 1994; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Our presidents have become big talkers. President Clinton, for example, is going across the country this week to sing the praises of his administration and of the Democratic candidates for whom he is campaigning. Even when there isn’t an… More

What D-Day Message from Clinton?

– Washington Times, May 22, 1994.
Excerpt: On April 19, Bill Clinton spoke to a group of high school students at an MTV Forum, the 24-hour music video channel on which he was to share time with (as The Washington Post put it) those “endearing morons” Beavis and Butt-head. On June… More

Getting Away with Murder

– Commentary, April 1994.
Excerpt: Trial by a jury of one’s peers is a venerable institution. Like Blackstone before him in England, the American Joseph Story, in his justly famous Commentaries on the Constitution (1833), traced it back to 1215 and Magna Carta, and, again like… More

Solving the Problem of Democracy

– South Africa's Crisis of Constitutional Democracy: Can the U.S. Constitution Help?, Robert A. Licht and Bertus de Villiers, eds. (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1994), 180–200; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: Some years ago, before an audience of federal judges and law professors, I said that there probably was not a law school in the United States that did not offer a course in constitutional law, or many that did not make it a part of the required… More

Learning to Live with Sex and Violence

– National Review, November 1, 1993.
Excerpt: Many years ago, at a supper club in Chicago, I asked a waiter (decked out, as I recall, like some character from the Arabian Nights) why they served their steaks on flaming swords. “Simple,” he replied. “The customers like it and… More

Leaving Town Alive

– Commentary, August 1993.
Excerpt: John Frohnmayer had two purposes in mind when he set out to write this book: he wanted to get even with all the enemies (or perceived enemies) he had made during the two-and-a- half years he served in the Bush administration as chairman of the… More

We, the People, Debate the Constitution

– Washington Times, July 4, 1993.
Excerpt: With the publication of the two volumes of “The Debate on the Constitution,” the 62nd and 63rd in the Library of America series, the general public will now have access to a full account of the controversy attending the ratification of… More

New Start for Statehood?

– Washington Times, May 24, 1993; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: If all goes well — or at least as planned — the District of Columbia soon will become the state of New Columbia. The bill calling for statehood failed of adoption last year — in fact, no action was taken on it — but there is… More

Commentary

– Rutgers Law Journal 24:3 (Spring 1993), 725–31.
Part of a symposium on “Race Relations and the United States Constitution: From Fugitive Slaves to Affirmative Action.”

Preserving a Living Constitution

– Is the Supreme Court the Guardian of the Constitution?, Robert A. Licht, ed. (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1993), 34–35; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).

Let’s Hear It for the Electoral College

– Wall Street Journal, December 2, 1992; reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).
Excerpt: Once again we have reason to be grateful for the Electoral College. Bill Clinton’s victory has been widely termed a “landslide.” Yet it was that, of course, only in the Electoral College. Among those who went to the polls on Nov. 3,… More

When the Last Vote Is Cast…

– Washington Times, November 3, 1992.
Excerpt: On Jan. 8, 1981, following the election in which John Anderson ran for president as an independent candidate, I began an article under this same title by pointing out that “where the Electoral College is concerned, nothing fails to succeed like… More

Electoral College Quiz

– Washington Times, November 3, 1992.
Excerpt: On Jan. 8, 1981, following the election in which John Anderson ran for president as an independent candidate, I began an article under this same title by pointing out that “where the Electoral College is concerned, nothing fails to succeed like… More

Lincoln at Gettysburg

– Commentary, November 1992.
Excerpt: Garry Wills has a lot of interesting things to say about the Gettysburg Address, and especially about the occasion on which it was delivered. We learn, for example, that far from arriving at the last minute, as popular mythology has it, Lincoln… More

An Office That We Take More Seriously Today

– Washington Times, July 27, 1992.
Excerpt: Perhaps never before in an election year has so much attention been paid to the vice presidency. And while the names Bush and Clinton headline the two major tickets, stay tuned for what political observers promise to be the Dan Quayle-Al Gore… More

On Madison and Majoritarianism: A Response to Professor Amar

– Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 15:113 (Winter 1992).
Excerpt: Some fourteen years ago, in Washington, before an audience consisting largely of law school professors and federal judges, I said there probably was not a law school in the country that did not teach constitutional law, and few that did not make it a… More

On Hamilton and Popular Government

– Public Interest 109 (Fall 1992), 109–13.
Excerpt: Alexander Hamilton has never been a popular hero among his fellow citizens. When visiting the capital city, they mount the tour buses that take them to the Capitol, the White House, and the great memorials and monuments bearing the names of… More

Natural Law, Natural Rights

– Washington Times, September 9, 1991. University of Cincinnati Law Review 61:1 (1992–93).
Excerpt: “The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty,” said Abraham Lincoln, “and the American people, just now, are much in need of one.” That was said in 1864. Judging from the controversy provoked by the Clarence… More

Review Essay: Locke and the Legislative Principle

– Public Interest 100 (Summer 1990), 147–56.
Excerpt: What is the role of Congress in our system of constitutional government and how well does it perform that role? To begin with, Congress is not Parliament, which means that ours is a system of constitutional–not parliamentary-supremacy.… More

The Demise of the Constitution

– Speech delivered at the National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, September 21, 1989; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: On January 20, 1989, George H. W. Bush took the following oath of office, an oath prescribed in the Constitution itself and, because of that, taken on each of the fifty-nine occasions since George Washington first took it in 1789: “I do solemnly… More

Flag-Burning & Other Modes of Expression

– Commentary, October 1989; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: This summer, Washington was given patriotism and obscenity to deal with when the Supreme Court upheld the burning of the flag by an angry Gregory Johnson and when an embarrassed Corcoran Gallery cancelled an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe… More

The Core as an Education for Natural Aristocrats

– Academic Questions 2:3 (Summer 1989),  22–26.
Focuses on the importance of education in aristocratic societies in the U.S. Influence of aristocrats in the cultivation of the arts and sciences; Principle of democracy; Coverage of aristocratic education.

Justice as the Securing of Rights

– The Constitution, the Courts, and the Quest for Justice, Robert A. Goldwin and William A. Schambra, eds. (American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1989).

The American Founding

– Principles of the Constitutional Order: The Ratification Debates, Robert L. Utley, ed. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989).

Retribution as the Ground for Punishment

– Crime and Punishment: Issues in Criminal Justice, Fred E. Baumann and Kenneth M. Jensen, eds. (Public Affairs Conference Center, Kenyon College, 1989).
Abstract: When societies do not believe their laws are just, they lack the confidence and strength to punish criminals. Some criminologists and social scientists in the past argued that retribution was barbaric, and they stressed rehabilitation over… More

What Does the Constitution Expect of Jews?

– The Judeo-Christian Tradition and the U.S. Constitution: Proceedings of a Conference at the Annenberg Research Institute, November 16–17, 1987, David M. Goldenberg, ed. (Philadelphia: Annenberg Research Institute, 1989), 21–27; reprinted in Democracy and the Constitution: Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought (AEI Press, 2006).
Excerpt: The short answer to this question is that the Constitution expects of Jews what it expects of everybody. George Washington expressed this perfectly in his famous (and very familiar) response of August 17, 1790, to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport,… More

Judicial Roulette

– Twentieth Century Fund Task Force Report on Judicial Selection (New York: Priority Press, 1988).

The Morality of Anger

– Philosophy of Punishment, Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, eds. (Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books, 1988, 1995).

The New Pursuit of Happiness

– Public Interest 86 (Winter 1987), 65–76.
Excerpt: Landing in New York in May 1831, Gustave de Beaumont was struck by the “busyness” of the place. “It’s a remarkable phenomenon,” he wrote his father, “a great people which has no army, a country full of activity and vigour where the action… More

Judicial Review and the Supreme Court

– The World and I (September 1987).
Excerpt: In a recent speech, Harvard law professor Archibald Cox acknowledged that the Supreme Court had succeeded in making the Constitution into an “instrument of massive reforms.” Leaving aside his notion of reform, this is an accurate enough… More

Equality as a Constitutional Concept

– Maryland Law Review 44 (Fall 1987).
Excerpt: I begin by setting the stage for a question. I then ask it. Put yourself in the position of a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. You are an antislavery white person or, perhaps, a black person. Or imagine yourself one… More

Public Trial by Public Jury

– Wall Street Journal, July 24, 1987.
Excerpt: At one point in the Iran-Contra hearings, Arthur L. Liman, Senate chief counsel, said (rather testily I thought): “This is not a prosecution, Col. North, this is an investigation.” To which Col. North might well have said in response,… More

In Times of Crisis, How Much Power Does the President Have?

– Washington Times, June 3, 1987; reprinted in The World and I (August 1987).
Excerpt: Lt. Col. Oliver North may or may not have broken the law, but that he was a hero Patrick J. Buchanan had no doubt. Unlike the other members of the Reagan White House – he was still the communications director at the time – Mr. Buchanan… More

Taking the Constitution Seriously

– Crisis, June 1, 1987.
Excerpt: Unlike the first federal judges, whose formal legal education was likely to have been very limited indeed — John Marshall was largely self-educated in the law and John Jay, the first chief justice, learned his in an office–today’s judges come… More

Government by Lawyers & Judges

– Commentary, June 1987.
Excerpt: We call it judicial review, and while the point has frequently been disputed, sometimes fiercely, there is really no question but that the Framers intended federal judges to exercise the power to invalidate laws that they consider unconstitutional.… More

A Machine That Would Go of Itself

– Commentary, February 1987.
Excerpt: Michael Kammen, the Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture at Cornell University, describes this book as a study in popular constitutionalism, by which he means “the perceptions and misperceptions, uses and abuses, knowledge and… More

Comment on Rowan

– Maryland Law Review 47:1 (1987).
Excerpt: I begin by setting the stage for a question. I then ask it. Put yourself in the position of a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. You are an antislavery white person or, perhaps, a black person. Or imagine yourself one… More

The ‘New’ Science of Politics and Constitutional Government

– Constitutionalism and Rights, Gary C. Bryner and Noel B. Reynolds, eds. (Albany NY: SUNY Press, 1987).
Abstract: Constitutionalism and Rights explores the ambivalent relationship between the American tradition of constitutionalism and the notions of rights that have emerged over the last three centuries. The six essays focus systematically on selected… More

Conservatism

– Encyclopedia of the American Constitution and Supplement, Leonard W. Levy, Kenneth L. Karst, and Dennis J. Mahoney, eds., 1987.

Capital Punishment Cases of 1976

– Encyclopedia of the American Constitution and Supplement, Leonard W. Levy, Kenneth L. Karst, and Dennis J. Mahoney, eds., 1987.

Capital Punishment Cases of 1972

– Encyclopedia of the American Constitution and Supplement, Leonard W. Levy, Kenneth L. Karst, and Dennis J. Mahoney, eds., 1987.

The Constitution and the Pursuit of American Happiness

– We the People, Constitutional Ideals and the American Experience: A Bicentennial Perspective, symposium hosted by Angelo State University, 1987.
Excerpt: There are, as I count them, 164 countries in the world, and of these all but six (Great Britain, New Zealand, and Israel; Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Libya) have written constitutions. In that respect the United States is not unique. However, our… More

Constitutional Power and the Defense of Free Government

– Terrorism: How the West Can Win, Benjamin Netanyahu, ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1986).
Abstract: Compiles statements from political leaders, scholars of Middle Eastern affairs, specialists on international terrorism, journalists, and foreign experts

Re-evaluating the Open Society

– Order, Freedom, and the Polity: Critical Essays on the Open Society, George W. Carey, ed. (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute and University Press of America, 1986).
Abstract: A series of essays which critically examine the concept of the open society as ‘the crowning achievement of Western civilization.’ Analyzes the open society theory from a variety of perspectives but some go well beyond the question of… More

Equally Endowed With Rights

– Justice and Equality Here and Now, Frank Lucash, ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 151–71.

How Has the United States Met Its Major Challenges Since 1945?

– Commentary, November 1985.
Excerpt: Things were different in America and always had been. Our aristocrats, our Tories, were dispatched in 1776, at the beginning, at the time we became Americans. They went back to England or fled to Canada where a few of their descendants even today… More

The Words According to Brennan

– Wall Street Journal, October 23, 1985.
Excerpt: Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. is an angry man who has begun to give vent to his anger off the bench and in public. Although his recent Georgetown University address appears to have been well received by those whom it was calculated and… More

Religion, Ethics and Politics in the 1980s

– Morality of the Market: Religion and Economic Perspectives, Walter Block, Geoffrey Brennan, and Kenneth Elzinga, eds. (Vancouver, Canada: The Fraser Institute, 1985).
Proceedings of an International Symposium on Religion, Economics and Social Thought, held August 9-11, 1982, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Teaching the Founding of the United States

– Politics in Perspective 13:1 (Fall 1985).
Abstract: If students are to understand the American Constitution, they must, like the Founders, take political philosophy seriously. Books and essays that college teachers can use to teach about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are… More

Has the Burger Court Gone Too Far?

– Commentary, October 1984.
Excerpt: Only yesterday, it seems, federal judges were being admired for refusing to confine themselves to the modest but appropriate role of interpreters of statutory or constitutional texts. The late Justice William O. Douglas especially was esteemed in… More

Judicial Rhetoric

– Rhetoric & American Statesmanship, ed. Glen E. Thurow and Jeffrey D. Wallin (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, May 1, 1984).

Do We Have a Living Constitution?

– National Forum LXIV:4 (Fall 1984).
Excerpt: Now, almost 200 years later, one can read Hamilton’s words in Federalist No. 1 and conclude that, under some conditions, some “societies of men” are capable of “establishing good government,” but that most are not. This… More

Citizenship, Rights and Responsibilities

– Rights, Citizenship, and Responsibilities, Bradford P. Wilson, ed. (Valley Forge, PA: Freedom Foundation, 1984).
The proceedings of Freedom Foundation’s symposium on citizen responsibilities, December 13-14, 1984, Washington, D.C.

Affirmative Action vs. the Declaration of Independence

– New Perspectives 16:1 (Summer 1984).
Abstract: Reverse discrimination is an effect of affirmative action that cannot be overlooked: it is discriminatory and it has victims. If laws may be used to discriminate against Whites, they may once again be used to discriminate against Blacks if we do not… More

The United Nations and Human Rights

– Human Rights Law and the Reagan Administration, Andrew Samet, ed. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984).
This book comprises a collection of papers prepared for a Human Rights Law Symposium held at the Georgetown University Law Center on March 22, 1983. Cosponsored by the International Law Institute and the Georgetown Jewish Law Students Association, the… More

The Constitution as Bill of Rights

– How Does the Constitution Secure Rights?, Robert A. Goldwin and William Schambra, eds. (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1984); reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).

The Writing of the Constitution of the United States

– American Enterprise Institute, 1984; reprinted by the President's Commission on White House Fellowships; reprinted in Constitution Makers on Constitution Making: The Exercises of Eight Nations, Robert A. Goldwin, ed. (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1988).
A paper presented to the White House fellows at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, October 19, 1983.

Third-World Ways in Cambridge USA

– Wall Street Journal, December 28, 1983.
Excerpt: “Property rights,” said the Cuban delegate, “are out of fashion at the United Nations.” This was said a couple of years ago in a response to a speech of mine, and, since he knew me to be a newcomer, it was said somewhat condescendingly, by… More

How to Talk to the Russians

– American Spectator (July 1983); reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).

The New Pacifism and World Government

– National Review (May 27, 1983); reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).
Abstract: The article presents a commentary on the increasing number of pacifists in the U.S. as of May 1983. It traces the history of pacifists in the country. It stresses the impact of the nuclear war threat on the upsurge of pacifists. It cites some of the… More

The Legislative Protection of Rights

– The U.S. Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, William R. McKercher (Ontario, Canada: Ontario Economic Council, 1983).

The American Presidency: Statesmanship and Constitutionalism in Balance

– Imprimis, Hillsdale College, January 1983. Reprinted in Educating for Liberty: The Best of Imprimis, 1972–2002, Douglas A. Jeffrey, ed. (Hillsdale, MI: Hillsdale College Press, 2002).
Excerpt: America today is in need of leadership of the sort provided in the past by our greatest presidents, presidents whom we mean to honor and praise when we denominate them “statesmen.” Our familiar habit of associating wisdom or propriety or… More

Taking Rights Frivolously

– Liberalism Reconsidered, Douglas MacLean and Claudia Mills, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983).

The Nation and the Bishops

– Wall Street Journal, December 15, 1982;  reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).

A New Flock of Sheep

– American Spectator (September 1982); reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).
Excerpt: As the Catholic “Peace Bishops” are about to learn, it is not possible to be both an American and a martyr.

Voting Rights and Wrongs

– Commentary, March 1982; reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).
Excerpt: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is surely the most successful civil-rights measure ever enacted by the national government. Everybody—or, at least, everybody who has publicly offered an opinion on the subject—agrees with this judgment, and there is… More

A Reply to Harry Jaffa

– National Review, January 22, 1982.
Abstract: The article presents the author’s response to professor Harry Jaffa’s criticism of his views about the Declaration of Independence in the U.S. The author says that there is no substance to his criticism by Jaffa. The author further says… More

Judicial Review and the Rights and Laws of Nature

– The Supreme Court Review 1982, (1982), 49–83; reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).
Excerpt: The current controversy over the proper role of the judiciary can be said to have begun twenty years ago with Herbert Wechsler’s appeal for Supreme Court decisions resting on “neutral principles of constitutional law.” More recently, Alexander… More

Who’s Afraid of Agee-Wolf?

– Wall Street Journal, November 4, 1981; reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).

Liberal Censorship

– Public Interest 65 (Fall 1981), 146–49.
Excerpt: One would have thought that the censorship issue had been settled in the liberal societies of the West. In theory pornography may be proscribed by the law-in the United States, for example, it is not protected by the First Amendment—but in practice… More

Psychology and Law: Can Justice Survive the Social Sciences?

– American Spectator (June 1981).
Excerpt: The author of this book belongs to no familiar school and the book itself is not readily categorized. He is a psychologist, even a professor of psychology, but the book could not have been written by someone who is only a psychologist. Its… More

Let Me Call You Quota, Sweetheart

– Commentary, May 1981; reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).
Excerpt: It was said of the late Justice William O. Douglas, and it was said by way of praising him, that more than any other judge in our time he dared to ask the question of what is good for the country and to translate (or, at least, to try to translate)… More

Privacy, Liberalism, and the Role of Government

– Liberty and the Rule of Law, Robert L. Cunningham, ed. (College Station, TX: Texas A & M Press, 1981).
Friedrich A. Hayek, distinguished scholar and Nobel laureate, has long been recognized as the moral and intellectual spokesman for classic liberalism and a free society. In January, 1976, a conference on the University of San Francisco campus convened to… More

The Need for Public Authority

– Modern Age 24:1 (Winter 1980); reprinted in Freedom and Virtue: The Conservative and Libertarian Debate, George W. Carey, ed. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984; reprinted, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2004).
Excerpt: Some ten years ago, I resigned from Cornel1 University; at that time the university had just been taken over by students carrying guns, and first the administration and then the faculty collapsed into separate but equally ignominious heaps. My… More

Terms of Endearment

– Harper's Magazine, October 1980; reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).

Defending the Death Penalty

– Crime & Delinquency 26:4 (October 1980)  503–11; reprinted in Contemporary Moral Issue, Wesley Cragg, ed. (Whitby, ON: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1983).
Excerpt: The allegedly moral objections to capital punishment are a product of modern amoral political philosophy, from which has derived the modern reluctance to exact retribution. Retribution is demanded by angry and morally indignant people, and, it is… More

The Corporation’s Song

– American Spectator 13:9 (September 1980).
“The Corporation’s Song” Walter Berns and lyrics by Hobbes, Locke, and Madison. Music by Mobil Oil?

Bonds of Cliché

– Commentary, September 1980.
Excerpt: The materials accompanying the publication of this new book by Richard Sennett, a sociologist by training and now a professor of humanities at New York University, describe him as “one of the most brilliant and provocative of American thinkers—a… More

The Clerks’ Tale

– Commentary, March 1980.
Excerpt: The Brethren is, as it claims to be, a term-by-term account of the “inner workings of the Supreme Court from 1969 to 1976—the first seven years of Warren E. Burger’s tenure as Chief Justice of the United States.” Focusing on the major cases… More

For Capital Punishment

– Harper's Magazine, April 1979; reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).
Excerpt: Until recently, my business did not require me to think about the punishment of criminals in general or the legitimacy and efficacy of capital punishment in particular. In a vague way, I was aware of the disagreement among professionals concerning… More

The Least Dangerous Branch, But Only If…

– The Judiciary in a Democratic Society, Leonard J. Theberge, ed. (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1979).
Based on papers presented at the national conference on the role of the judiciary in a democratic society held at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., on September 30 and October 1, 1977.

Religion and the Founding Principle

– The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, Robert H. Horwitz, ed. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1977, 1986).

Whether You Want It or Not

– National Review, October 10, 1975, 1124.
Book review of The Rise of Guardian Democracy by Ward E.Y. Elliott.

Two Mills and Liberty

– Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1975.
Excerpt: “On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill” tells the astonishing story of John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty,” which is a story about the book (one of the most famous texts of liberalism), the Mill who wrote it, and Harriet… More

Justified Anger, Just Retribution

– Imprimis, Hillsdale College, June 1974.
Excerpt: Between 1966 and 1971 the U.S. murder rate increased by 52 percent, and the crime rate as a whole by 74 percent, as reported in Crime in the United States: Uniform Crime Reports, 1971. Crimes of violence (murder, forcible rape, robbery and… More

Violence, Morality and the Law

– The Intercollegiate Review 9:2 (Spring 1974).
Excerpt: In Political Violence and Civil Disobedience, Ernest van den Haag argues that the problem underlying civil disobedience is the question whether there is ever a moral right to disobey a lawful authority.  Van den Haag argues that all governments… More

The Essential Soul of Daniel Berrigan

– National Review, November 9, 1973; reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).
Excerpt: It is Dan’s talent for publicity that accounts for the swiftness of his elevation to the ranks of the exalted. Unlike [Thomas] More, Dan has written a play about his own martyrdom—probably the first to do so—in which he is likened to Jesus… More

Thinking About the City

– Commentary, October 1973; reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).
Excerpt: Cities express an ambivalence in the American soul: we like cities and wish to live in them—or at least to visit them—but we also dislike cities and wish to avoid them, and live instead on farms or in suburbs, and wish we could redesign the whole… More

The Importance of Being Amish

– Harper's (March 1973); reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984); reprinted in Contemporary Debates on Civil Liberties: Enduring Constitutional Questions, Glenn A. Phelps and Robert A. Poirier, eds. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1985), 28–34.

Free Speech and Free Government

– The Political Science Reviewer 2:1 (Fall 1972).
Excerpt: It is unfortunate, and a measure of our contemporary difficulties, that too many Americans today would hesitate to agree with Gladstone that the American Constitution was “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and… More

The Limits to Judicial Power

– National Review, September 1, 1972, 958.
Book review of The Modern Supreme Court by Robert G. McCloskey and Martin Shapiro.

Pornography Vs. Democracy: The Case for Censorship

– Public Interest 22 (Winter 1971), 3–24.
Excerpt: The case against censorship is very old and very familiar. Almost anyone can formulate it without difficulty. One has merely to set the venerable Milton‘s Areopagitica in modem prose, using modem spelling, punctuation, and examples. This is… More

The New Left and Liberal Democracy

– How Democratic is America?: Responses to the New Left Challenge, Robert A. Goldwin, ed. (Skokie, IL: Rand McNally, 1971).
Outgrowth of a conference held under the auspices of the Public Affairs Conference Center of Kenyon College.

The Constitution and the Migration of Slaves

– The Yale Law Journal 78:2 (December 1968), 198–228; reprinted in Walter Berns, In Defense of Liberal Democracy (Regnery Gateway, 1984).
Excerpt: Shortly after the adoption of the Constitution, the South came to see the power granted to Congress to regulate commerce as a major threat to its domestic tranquility, for this power extended, or might reasonably be seen to extend, to the regulation… More

Defending Politics

– Commentary, August 1966.
Excerpt: As might have been expected, this posthumous work by the late V. O. Key, Jr. is the best voting study to appear, although its merits will be apparent only to readers who know the earlier ones. Others will surely wonder how so modest a book,… More

The Sources of Law

– National Review, August 11, 1964, 690.
Book review of The Morality of Law by Lon L. Fuller.

Law and Behavioral Science

– Law and Contemporary Problems 28 (Winter 1963).
Excerpt: Behavioral science, which has only recently become a subject of discussion in legal journals, has had its greatest impact on the newer social sciences, especially sociology. This success may be attributed either to the ability of the behavioral… More

John Milton

– History of Political Thought, Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds. (Skokie, IL: Rand McNally, 1963; reprinted, University of Chicago Press, 1987).

The Meaning of the Tenth Amendment

– A Nation of States: Essays on the American Federal System, Robert A. Goldwin, ed. (Skokie, IL: Rand McNally College Pub. Co., 1963).

Professors and Politics

– Cornell Daily Sun, May 4, 1962.
Excerpt: The purpose of the university places it in a position of uneasy tension with the community, and the tension is likely to increase with the extent to which this purpose is fulfilled. Devoted to the discovery of truth, it is likely to be unmindful of… More

Voting Studies

– Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, Herbert J. Storing, ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962).

Freedom and Loyalty

– The Journal of Politics 18:1 (February 1956), 17–27.
Excerpt: It is best to begin with what is familiar and, I hope, noncontroversial. Until the first World War there was no problem of freedom and loyalty to speak of in the United States. There were no un-American activities committees either because there were… More

Buck v. Bell: Due Process of Law?

– Western Political Quarterly 6:4 (December 1953).
Excerpt: A quarter of a century has passed since Justice Holmes provided the eugenical sterilization movement with a constitutional blessing and an epigrammatic battle cry. His opinion for the Court in Buck v. Bell was regarded by eugenicists as the herald of… More