Tag: American Constitutionalism

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Books

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.… More

Freedom, Virtue and the First Amendment

– The Louisiana State University Press, 1957; reprinted, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1969.
This book examines the First Amendment and issues of liberty and the American Founding. Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments I           Censorship: A Classic Issue… More

Book Review: Freedom, Virtue and the First Amendment

– Rene de Visme Williamson, Louisiana Law Review 18:2 (February 1958).
Excerpt: In an age when conflicting ideologies are competing for the support of mankind and when constitutional issues regarding civil liberties are dividing the American people in opposing… More

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).

The Sources of Law

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

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… More

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… 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 Limits to Judicial Power

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

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… 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.

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.

Religion and the Founding Principle

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

The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy

– William J. Bennett, Commentary (May 1977).
Abstract: The recent First Amendment decisions of the Supreme Court have met with criticism both from those who think the Court has gone too far and from those who think it has not gone far… 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… 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… 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?

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… 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… 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… More

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… More

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.

The Nation and the Bishops

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

Taking Rights Frivolously

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

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).

After the People Vote: Steps in Choosing the President

– American Enterprise Institute Press, 1983; second edition, 1992.
Explains how electors are appointed, how ballots are cast and votes are counted, and what happens if no one has a majority; and discusses three disputed elections.

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… More

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.

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).

In Defense of Political Philosophy: Two Letters to Walter Berns

– In Harry Jaffa, American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1984)
Excerpt: IN HIS ‘REPLY TO Harry Jaffa” (National Review, January 22, 1982), Walter Berns writes: There is no substance to Harry Jaffa’s criticism of me. In 1972, he wrote that the… 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… More

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,… 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.

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… More

In Defense of Liberal Democracy

– Regnery Gateway, 1984.
In this new book of essays, Walter Berns give shape to the arena of American government and politics. He contends that “free government is an endangered species in our world,”… More

Judicial Rhetoric

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

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… More

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… 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.

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… More

Equally Endowed With Rights

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

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… 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

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.… More

Conservatism

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

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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

Liberty and Equality

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, December 1, 1987.
This a session from the larger conference held by the American Enterprise Institute entitled “The Spirit of the Constitution.” The focus of this panel was liberty and equality. Part… More

Judicial Roulette

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

Taking the Framers Seriously

– William Michael Treanor, The University of Chicago Law Review 55:3 (Summer, 1988), pp. 1016–40.
Abstract: This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution… 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… More

The American Founding

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

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 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… More

Blacks, Women & Jews & the Constitution

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, April 19, 1990.
A panel discusses Robert Goldwin’s new book, Why Blacks, Women, and Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution, and Other Unorthodox Views.

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… More

Taking the Constitution Seriously

– Simon and Schuster, 1987; reprinted, Madison Books, 1992.
Walter Berns’s book is must reading for every judge, law student, or member of the general public who wants to know more about our Federal Constitution. Berns concisely and clearly… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

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).

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.”

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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

Walter Berns on C-SPAN Booknotes

– Interview with Walter Berns on his book Making Patriots by Brian Lamb, Booknotes, C-SPAN, August 19, 2001.
Excerpt: BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Walter Berns, where did you get the idea of writing a book called Making Patriots? Professor WALTER BERNS (Author, Making Patriots): Where did I get the idea? I… More

America—Idea or Nation?

– Wilfred M. McClay, Public Interest (Fall 2001).
Excerpt: At first glance, American patriotism seems a simple matter. But it is simple only until one actually starts to think about it, inquire after its sources, and investigate its… More

Imperishable Insights by Bill Buckley

– William F. Buckley, New Criterion (September 2001).
Excerpt: This (too) short book grew out of an essay written by the distinguished political philosopher Walter Berns for The Public Interest. What it does is to probe into American… 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… 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… 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,… More

Interview with Walter Berns

– Peter and Helen Evans, RenewAmerica, August 4, 2004.
Excerpt: Helen: Let’s talk about your book, Making Patriots. What do you think the alternative to waving the flag at our Independence Day celebrations would be for that person? In… More

Walter Berns, 2005 National Humanities Medalist

– Cynthia Barnes, National Endowment for the Humanities, January 2005.
Excerpt: As a boy in 1920s Chicago, Walter Berns watched survivors of the Indian Wars march down Michigan Avenue during the Memorial Day parade. At school, he memorized the Gettysburg… 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… 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… More

Democracy and the Constitution: Essays by Walter Berns

– Audio, book forum, American Enterprise Institute, September 29, 2006.
AEI scholar and historian Walter Berns has spent his academic career defending the United States Constitution. In his latest collection of essays, Democracy and the Constitution (AEI Press,… 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… 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… More

Abraham Lincoln at Two Hundred

– Audio lecture, American Enterprise Institute, February 9, 2009.
Abraham Lincoln was the greatest of our presidents. He saved the Union, which made it possible for him to free the slaves. But he did more than this; without him we probably would have had… 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… More

Free Markets and the Constitution

– Audio lecture, American Enterprise Institute, August 11, 2009.
Why is the number of Americans who value free enterprise, and who understand its virtues and benefits declining–especially among students and younger citizens? Asked in an… 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,… More

Walter Berns’ Constitution by Christopher DeMuth

– Remarks by Christopher DeMuth at a Constitution Day seminar in honor of Walter Berns, hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, September 20, 2011.
Excerpt: In America today, the Constitution has come to mean constitutional law. Most Americans venerate their Constitution and realize that it is an important source of their liberties and… More

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… More

Patriots

– Audio, "Dialogue," Woodrow Wilson Center.
In ancient Sparta patriotism meant a commitment to warfare and a view of the state as divine. For modern Americans patriotism is set on a much different and abstract basis. Walter Berns… More

Courts and Character

– Rainer Knopff, remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: I am honored to be here to discuss the life and work of Walter Berns – a wonderful teacher, a superb scholar, a beautiful writer, and, quite simply, one of the finest men I have… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

The Man that Made the Constitution Relevant

– Video, American Enterprise Institute, September 17, 2015.
A short tribute video produced by the American Enterprise Institute about the life and work of Walter Berns.

Essays

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.… More

Freedom, Virtue and the First Amendment

– The Louisiana State University Press, 1957; reprinted, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1969.
This book examines the First Amendment and issues of liberty and the American Founding. Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments I           Censorship: A Classic Issue… More

Book Review: Freedom, Virtue and the First Amendment

– Rene de Visme Williamson, Louisiana Law Review 18:2 (February 1958).
Excerpt: In an age when conflicting ideologies are competing for the support of mankind and when constitutional issues regarding civil liberties are dividing the American people in opposing… More

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).

The Sources of Law

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

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… More

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… 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 Limits to Judicial Power

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

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… 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.

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.

Religion and the Founding Principle

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

The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy

– William J. Bennett, Commentary (May 1977).
Abstract: The recent First Amendment decisions of the Supreme Court have met with criticism both from those who think the Court has gone too far and from those who think it has not gone far… 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… 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… 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?

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… 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… 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… More

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… More

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.

The Nation and the Bishops

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

Taking Rights Frivolously

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

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).

After the People Vote: Steps in Choosing the President

– American Enterprise Institute Press, 1983; second edition, 1992.
Explains how electors are appointed, how ballots are cast and votes are counted, and what happens if no one has a majority; and discusses three disputed elections.

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… More

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.

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).

In Defense of Political Philosophy: Two Letters to Walter Berns

– In Harry Jaffa, American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1984)
Excerpt: IN HIS ‘REPLY TO Harry Jaffa” (National Review, January 22, 1982), Walter Berns writes: There is no substance to Harry Jaffa’s criticism of me. In 1972, he wrote that the… 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… More

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,… 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.

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… More

In Defense of Liberal Democracy

– Regnery Gateway, 1984.
In this new book of essays, Walter Berns give shape to the arena of American government and politics. He contends that “free government is an endangered species in our world,”… More

Judicial Rhetoric

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

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… More

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… 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.

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… More

Equally Endowed With Rights

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

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… 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

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.… More

Conservatism

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

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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

Liberty and Equality

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, December 1, 1987.
This a session from the larger conference held by the American Enterprise Institute entitled “The Spirit of the Constitution.” The focus of this panel was liberty and equality. Part… More

Judicial Roulette

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

Taking the Framers Seriously

– William Michael Treanor, The University of Chicago Law Review 55:3 (Summer, 1988), pp. 1016–40.
Abstract: This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution… 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… More

The American Founding

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

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 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… More

Blacks, Women & Jews & the Constitution

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, April 19, 1990.
A panel discusses Robert Goldwin’s new book, Why Blacks, Women, and Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution, and Other Unorthodox Views.

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… More

Taking the Constitution Seriously

– Simon and Schuster, 1987; reprinted, Madison Books, 1992.
Walter Berns’s book is must reading for every judge, law student, or member of the general public who wants to know more about our Federal Constitution. Berns concisely and clearly… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

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).

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.”

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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

Walter Berns on C-SPAN Booknotes

– Interview with Walter Berns on his book Making Patriots by Brian Lamb, Booknotes, C-SPAN, August 19, 2001.
Excerpt: BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Walter Berns, where did you get the idea of writing a book called Making Patriots? Professor WALTER BERNS (Author, Making Patriots): Where did I get the idea? I… More

America—Idea or Nation?

– Wilfred M. McClay, Public Interest (Fall 2001).
Excerpt: At first glance, American patriotism seems a simple matter. But it is simple only until one actually starts to think about it, inquire after its sources, and investigate its… More

Imperishable Insights by Bill Buckley

– William F. Buckley, New Criterion (September 2001).
Excerpt: This (too) short book grew out of an essay written by the distinguished political philosopher Walter Berns for The Public Interest. What it does is to probe into American… 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… 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… 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,… More

Interview with Walter Berns

– Peter and Helen Evans, RenewAmerica, August 4, 2004.
Excerpt: Helen: Let’s talk about your book, Making Patriots. What do you think the alternative to waving the flag at our Independence Day celebrations would be for that person? In… More

Walter Berns, 2005 National Humanities Medalist

– Cynthia Barnes, National Endowment for the Humanities, January 2005.
Excerpt: As a boy in 1920s Chicago, Walter Berns watched survivors of the Indian Wars march down Michigan Avenue during the Memorial Day parade. At school, he memorized the Gettysburg… 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… 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… More

Democracy and the Constitution: Essays by Walter Berns

– Audio, book forum, American Enterprise Institute, September 29, 2006.
AEI scholar and historian Walter Berns has spent his academic career defending the United States Constitution. In his latest collection of essays, Democracy and the Constitution (AEI Press,… 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… 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… More

Abraham Lincoln at Two Hundred

– Audio lecture, American Enterprise Institute, February 9, 2009.
Abraham Lincoln was the greatest of our presidents. He saved the Union, which made it possible for him to free the slaves. But he did more than this; without him we probably would have had… 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… More

Free Markets and the Constitution

– Audio lecture, American Enterprise Institute, August 11, 2009.
Why is the number of Americans who value free enterprise, and who understand its virtues and benefits declining–especially among students and younger citizens? Asked in an… 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,… More

Walter Berns’ Constitution by Christopher DeMuth

– Remarks by Christopher DeMuth at a Constitution Day seminar in honor of Walter Berns, hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, September 20, 2011.
Excerpt: In America today, the Constitution has come to mean constitutional law. Most Americans venerate their Constitution and realize that it is an important source of their liberties and… More

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… More

Patriots

– Audio, "Dialogue," Woodrow Wilson Center.
In ancient Sparta patriotism meant a commitment to warfare and a view of the state as divine. For modern Americans patriotism is set on a much different and abstract basis. Walter Berns… More

Courts and Character

– Rainer Knopff, remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: I am honored to be here to discuss the life and work of Walter Berns – a wonderful teacher, a superb scholar, a beautiful writer, and, quite simply, one of the finest men I have… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

The Man that Made the Constitution Relevant

– Video, American Enterprise Institute, September 17, 2015.
A short tribute video produced by the American Enterprise Institute about the life and work of Walter Berns.

Commentary

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.… More

Freedom, Virtue and the First Amendment

– The Louisiana State University Press, 1957; reprinted, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1969.
This book examines the First Amendment and issues of liberty and the American Founding. Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments I           Censorship: A Classic Issue… More

Book Review: Freedom, Virtue and the First Amendment

– Rene de Visme Williamson, Louisiana Law Review 18:2 (February 1958).
Excerpt: In an age when conflicting ideologies are competing for the support of mankind and when constitutional issues regarding civil liberties are dividing the American people in opposing… More

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).

The Sources of Law

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

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… More

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… 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 Limits to Judicial Power

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

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… 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.

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.

Religion and the Founding Principle

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

The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy

– William J. Bennett, Commentary (May 1977).
Abstract: The recent First Amendment decisions of the Supreme Court have met with criticism both from those who think the Court has gone too far and from those who think it has not gone far… 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… 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… 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?

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… 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… 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… More

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… More

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.

The Nation and the Bishops

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

Taking Rights Frivolously

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

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).

After the People Vote: Steps in Choosing the President

– American Enterprise Institute Press, 1983; second edition, 1992.
Explains how electors are appointed, how ballots are cast and votes are counted, and what happens if no one has a majority; and discusses three disputed elections.

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… More

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.

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).

In Defense of Political Philosophy: Two Letters to Walter Berns

– In Harry Jaffa, American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1984)
Excerpt: IN HIS ‘REPLY TO Harry Jaffa” (National Review, January 22, 1982), Walter Berns writes: There is no substance to Harry Jaffa’s criticism of me. In 1972, he wrote that the… 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… More

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,… 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.

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… More

In Defense of Liberal Democracy

– Regnery Gateway, 1984.
In this new book of essays, Walter Berns give shape to the arena of American government and politics. He contends that “free government is an endangered species in our world,”… More

Judicial Rhetoric

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

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… More

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… 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.

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… More

Equally Endowed With Rights

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

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… 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

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.… More

Conservatism

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

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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

Liberty and Equality

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, December 1, 1987.
This a session from the larger conference held by the American Enterprise Institute entitled “The Spirit of the Constitution.” The focus of this panel was liberty and equality. Part… More

Judicial Roulette

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

Taking the Framers Seriously

– William Michael Treanor, The University of Chicago Law Review 55:3 (Summer, 1988), pp. 1016–40.
Abstract: This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution… 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… More

The American Founding

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

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 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… More

Blacks, Women & Jews & the Constitution

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, April 19, 1990.
A panel discusses Robert Goldwin’s new book, Why Blacks, Women, and Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution, and Other Unorthodox Views.

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… More

Taking the Constitution Seriously

– Simon and Schuster, 1987; reprinted, Madison Books, 1992.
Walter Berns’s book is must reading for every judge, law student, or member of the general public who wants to know more about our Federal Constitution. Berns concisely and clearly… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

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).

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.”

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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

Walter Berns on C-SPAN Booknotes

– Interview with Walter Berns on his book Making Patriots by Brian Lamb, Booknotes, C-SPAN, August 19, 2001.
Excerpt: BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Walter Berns, where did you get the idea of writing a book called Making Patriots? Professor WALTER BERNS (Author, Making Patriots): Where did I get the idea? I… More

America—Idea or Nation?

– Wilfred M. McClay, Public Interest (Fall 2001).
Excerpt: At first glance, American patriotism seems a simple matter. But it is simple only until one actually starts to think about it, inquire after its sources, and investigate its… More

Imperishable Insights by Bill Buckley

– William F. Buckley, New Criterion (September 2001).
Excerpt: This (too) short book grew out of an essay written by the distinguished political philosopher Walter Berns for The Public Interest. What it does is to probe into American… 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… 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… 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,… More

Interview with Walter Berns

– Peter and Helen Evans, RenewAmerica, August 4, 2004.
Excerpt: Helen: Let’s talk about your book, Making Patriots. What do you think the alternative to waving the flag at our Independence Day celebrations would be for that person? In… More

Walter Berns, 2005 National Humanities Medalist

– Cynthia Barnes, National Endowment for the Humanities, January 2005.
Excerpt: As a boy in 1920s Chicago, Walter Berns watched survivors of the Indian Wars march down Michigan Avenue during the Memorial Day parade. At school, he memorized the Gettysburg… 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… 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… More

Democracy and the Constitution: Essays by Walter Berns

– Audio, book forum, American Enterprise Institute, September 29, 2006.
AEI scholar and historian Walter Berns has spent his academic career defending the United States Constitution. In his latest collection of essays, Democracy and the Constitution (AEI Press,… 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… 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… More

Abraham Lincoln at Two Hundred

– Audio lecture, American Enterprise Institute, February 9, 2009.
Abraham Lincoln was the greatest of our presidents. He saved the Union, which made it possible for him to free the slaves. But he did more than this; without him we probably would have had… 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… More

Free Markets and the Constitution

– Audio lecture, American Enterprise Institute, August 11, 2009.
Why is the number of Americans who value free enterprise, and who understand its virtues and benefits declining–especially among students and younger citizens? Asked in an… 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,… More

Walter Berns’ Constitution by Christopher DeMuth

– Remarks by Christopher DeMuth at a Constitution Day seminar in honor of Walter Berns, hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, September 20, 2011.
Excerpt: In America today, the Constitution has come to mean constitutional law. Most Americans venerate their Constitution and realize that it is an important source of their liberties and… More

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… More

Patriots

– Audio, "Dialogue," Woodrow Wilson Center.
In ancient Sparta patriotism meant a commitment to warfare and a view of the state as divine. For modern Americans patriotism is set on a much different and abstract basis. Walter Berns… More

Courts and Character

– Rainer Knopff, remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: I am honored to be here to discuss the life and work of Walter Berns – a wonderful teacher, a superb scholar, a beautiful writer, and, quite simply, one of the finest men I have… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

The Man that Made the Constitution Relevant

– Video, American Enterprise Institute, September 17, 2015.
A short tribute video produced by the American Enterprise Institute about the life and work of Walter Berns.

Multimedia

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.… More

Freedom, Virtue and the First Amendment

– The Louisiana State University Press, 1957; reprinted, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1969.
This book examines the First Amendment and issues of liberty and the American Founding. Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments I           Censorship: A Classic Issue… More

Book Review: Freedom, Virtue and the First Amendment

– Rene de Visme Williamson, Louisiana Law Review 18:2 (February 1958).
Excerpt: In an age when conflicting ideologies are competing for the support of mankind and when constitutional issues regarding civil liberties are dividing the American people in opposing… More

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).

The Sources of Law

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

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… More

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… 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 Limits to Judicial Power

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

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… 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.

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.

Religion and the Founding Principle

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

The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy

– William J. Bennett, Commentary (May 1977).
Abstract: The recent First Amendment decisions of the Supreme Court have met with criticism both from those who think the Court has gone too far and from those who think it has not gone far… 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… 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… 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?

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… 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… 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… More

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… More

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.

The Nation and the Bishops

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

Taking Rights Frivolously

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

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).

After the People Vote: Steps in Choosing the President

– American Enterprise Institute Press, 1983; second edition, 1992.
Explains how electors are appointed, how ballots are cast and votes are counted, and what happens if no one has a majority; and discusses three disputed elections.

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… More

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.

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).

In Defense of Political Philosophy: Two Letters to Walter Berns

– In Harry Jaffa, American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1984)
Excerpt: IN HIS ‘REPLY TO Harry Jaffa” (National Review, January 22, 1982), Walter Berns writes: There is no substance to Harry Jaffa’s criticism of me. In 1972, he wrote that the… 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… More

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,… 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.

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… More

In Defense of Liberal Democracy

– Regnery Gateway, 1984.
In this new book of essays, Walter Berns give shape to the arena of American government and politics. He contends that “free government is an endangered species in our world,”… More

Judicial Rhetoric

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

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… More

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… 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.

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… More

Equally Endowed With Rights

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

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… 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

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.… More

Conservatism

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

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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

Liberty and Equality

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, December 1, 1987.
This a session from the larger conference held by the American Enterprise Institute entitled “The Spirit of the Constitution.” The focus of this panel was liberty and equality. Part… More

Judicial Roulette

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

Taking the Framers Seriously

– William Michael Treanor, The University of Chicago Law Review 55:3 (Summer, 1988), pp. 1016–40.
Abstract: This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution… 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… More

The American Founding

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

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 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… More

Blacks, Women & Jews & the Constitution

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, April 19, 1990.
A panel discusses Robert Goldwin’s new book, Why Blacks, Women, and Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution, and Other Unorthodox Views.

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… More

Taking the Constitution Seriously

– Simon and Schuster, 1987; reprinted, Madison Books, 1992.
Walter Berns’s book is must reading for every judge, law student, or member of the general public who wants to know more about our Federal Constitution. Berns concisely and clearly… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

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).

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.”

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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

Walter Berns on C-SPAN Booknotes

– Interview with Walter Berns on his book Making Patriots by Brian Lamb, Booknotes, C-SPAN, August 19, 2001.
Excerpt: BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Walter Berns, where did you get the idea of writing a book called Making Patriots? Professor WALTER BERNS (Author, Making Patriots): Where did I get the idea? I… More

America—Idea or Nation?

– Wilfred M. McClay, Public Interest (Fall 2001).
Excerpt: At first glance, American patriotism seems a simple matter. But it is simple only until one actually starts to think about it, inquire after its sources, and investigate its… More

Imperishable Insights by Bill Buckley

– William F. Buckley, New Criterion (September 2001).
Excerpt: This (too) short book grew out of an essay written by the distinguished political philosopher Walter Berns for The Public Interest. What it does is to probe into American… 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… 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… 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,… More

Interview with Walter Berns

– Peter and Helen Evans, RenewAmerica, August 4, 2004.
Excerpt: Helen: Let’s talk about your book, Making Patriots. What do you think the alternative to waving the flag at our Independence Day celebrations would be for that person? In… More

Walter Berns, 2005 National Humanities Medalist

– Cynthia Barnes, National Endowment for the Humanities, January 2005.
Excerpt: As a boy in 1920s Chicago, Walter Berns watched survivors of the Indian Wars march down Michigan Avenue during the Memorial Day parade. At school, he memorized the Gettysburg… 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… 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… More

Democracy and the Constitution: Essays by Walter Berns

– Audio, book forum, American Enterprise Institute, September 29, 2006.
AEI scholar and historian Walter Berns has spent his academic career defending the United States Constitution. In his latest collection of essays, Democracy and the Constitution (AEI Press,… 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… 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… More

Abraham Lincoln at Two Hundred

– Audio lecture, American Enterprise Institute, February 9, 2009.
Abraham Lincoln was the greatest of our presidents. He saved the Union, which made it possible for him to free the slaves. But he did more than this; without him we probably would have had… 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… More

Free Markets and the Constitution

– Audio lecture, American Enterprise Institute, August 11, 2009.
Why is the number of Americans who value free enterprise, and who understand its virtues and benefits declining–especially among students and younger citizens? Asked in an… 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,… More

Walter Berns’ Constitution by Christopher DeMuth

– Remarks by Christopher DeMuth at a Constitution Day seminar in honor of Walter Berns, hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, September 20, 2011.
Excerpt: In America today, the Constitution has come to mean constitutional law. Most Americans venerate their Constitution and realize that it is an important source of their liberties and… More

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… More

Patriots

– Audio, "Dialogue," Woodrow Wilson Center.
In ancient Sparta patriotism meant a commitment to warfare and a view of the state as divine. For modern Americans patriotism is set on a much different and abstract basis. Walter Berns… More

Courts and Character

– Rainer Knopff, remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: I am honored to be here to discuss the life and work of Walter Berns – a wonderful teacher, a superb scholar, a beautiful writer, and, quite simply, one of the finest men I have… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

The Man that Made the Constitution Relevant

– Video, American Enterprise Institute, September 17, 2015.
A short tribute video produced by the American Enterprise Institute about the life and work of Walter Berns.

Teaching

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.… More

Freedom, Virtue and the First Amendment

– The Louisiana State University Press, 1957; reprinted, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1969.
This book examines the First Amendment and issues of liberty and the American Founding. Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments I           Censorship: A Classic Issue… More

Book Review: Freedom, Virtue and the First Amendment

– Rene de Visme Williamson, Louisiana Law Review 18:2 (February 1958).
Excerpt: In an age when conflicting ideologies are competing for the support of mankind and when constitutional issues regarding civil liberties are dividing the American people in opposing… More

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).

The Sources of Law

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

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… More

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… 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 Limits to Judicial Power

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

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… 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.

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.

Religion and the Founding Principle

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

The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy

– William J. Bennett, Commentary (May 1977).
Abstract: The recent First Amendment decisions of the Supreme Court have met with criticism both from those who think the Court has gone too far and from those who think it has not gone far… 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… 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… 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?

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… 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… 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… More

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… More

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.

The Nation and the Bishops

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

Taking Rights Frivolously

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

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).

After the People Vote: Steps in Choosing the President

– American Enterprise Institute Press, 1983; second edition, 1992.
Explains how electors are appointed, how ballots are cast and votes are counted, and what happens if no one has a majority; and discusses three disputed elections.

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… More

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.

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).

In Defense of Political Philosophy: Two Letters to Walter Berns

– In Harry Jaffa, American Conservatism and the American Founding (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1984)
Excerpt: IN HIS ‘REPLY TO Harry Jaffa” (National Review, January 22, 1982), Walter Berns writes: There is no substance to Harry Jaffa’s criticism of me. In 1972, he wrote that the… 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… More

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,… 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.

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… More

In Defense of Liberal Democracy

– Regnery Gateway, 1984.
In this new book of essays, Walter Berns give shape to the arena of American government and politics. He contends that “free government is an endangered species in our world,”… More

Judicial Rhetoric

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

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… More

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… 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.

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… More

Equally Endowed With Rights

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

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… 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

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.… More

Conservatism

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

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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

Liberty and Equality

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, December 1, 1987.
This a session from the larger conference held by the American Enterprise Institute entitled “The Spirit of the Constitution.” The focus of this panel was liberty and equality. Part… More

Judicial Roulette

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

Taking the Framers Seriously

– William Michael Treanor, The University of Chicago Law Review 55:3 (Summer, 1988), pp. 1016–40.
Abstract: This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution… 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… More

The American Founding

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

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 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… More

Blacks, Women & Jews & the Constitution

– Panel discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, April 19, 1990.
A panel discusses Robert Goldwin’s new book, Why Blacks, Women, and Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution, and Other Unorthodox Views.

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… More

Taking the Constitution Seriously

– Simon and Schuster, 1987; reprinted, Madison Books, 1992.
Walter Berns’s book is must reading for every judge, law student, or member of the general public who wants to know more about our Federal Constitution. Berns concisely and clearly… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

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).

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.”

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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

Walter Berns on C-SPAN Booknotes

– Interview with Walter Berns on his book Making Patriots by Brian Lamb, Booknotes, C-SPAN, August 19, 2001.
Excerpt: BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Walter Berns, where did you get the idea of writing a book called Making Patriots? Professor WALTER BERNS (Author, Making Patriots): Where did I get the idea? I… More

America—Idea or Nation?

– Wilfred M. McClay, Public Interest (Fall 2001).
Excerpt: At first glance, American patriotism seems a simple matter. But it is simple only until one actually starts to think about it, inquire after its sources, and investigate its… More

Imperishable Insights by Bill Buckley

– William F. Buckley, New Criterion (September 2001).
Excerpt: This (too) short book grew out of an essay written by the distinguished political philosopher Walter Berns for The Public Interest. What it does is to probe into American… 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… 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… 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,… More

Interview with Walter Berns

– Peter and Helen Evans, RenewAmerica, August 4, 2004.
Excerpt: Helen: Let’s talk about your book, Making Patriots. What do you think the alternative to waving the flag at our Independence Day celebrations would be for that person? In… More

Walter Berns, 2005 National Humanities Medalist

– Cynthia Barnes, National Endowment for the Humanities, January 2005.
Excerpt: As a boy in 1920s Chicago, Walter Berns watched survivors of the Indian Wars march down Michigan Avenue during the Memorial Day parade. At school, he memorized the Gettysburg… 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… 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… More

Democracy and the Constitution: Essays by Walter Berns

– Audio, book forum, American Enterprise Institute, September 29, 2006.
AEI scholar and historian Walter Berns has spent his academic career defending the United States Constitution. In his latest collection of essays, Democracy and the Constitution (AEI Press,… 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… 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… More

Abraham Lincoln at Two Hundred

– Audio lecture, American Enterprise Institute, February 9, 2009.
Abraham Lincoln was the greatest of our presidents. He saved the Union, which made it possible for him to free the slaves. But he did more than this; without him we probably would have had… 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… More

Free Markets and the Constitution

– Audio lecture, American Enterprise Institute, August 11, 2009.
Why is the number of Americans who value free enterprise, and who understand its virtues and benefits declining–especially among students and younger citizens? Asked in an… 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,… More

Walter Berns’ Constitution by Christopher DeMuth

– Remarks by Christopher DeMuth at a Constitution Day seminar in honor of Walter Berns, hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, September 20, 2011.
Excerpt: In America today, the Constitution has come to mean constitutional law. Most Americans venerate their Constitution and realize that it is an important source of their liberties and… More

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… More

Patriots

– Audio, "Dialogue," Woodrow Wilson Center.
In ancient Sparta patriotism meant a commitment to warfare and a view of the state as divine. For modern Americans patriotism is set on a much different and abstract basis. Walter Berns… More

Courts and Character

– Rainer Knopff, remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: I am honored to be here to discuss the life and work of Walter Berns – a wonderful teacher, a superb scholar, a beautiful writer, and, quite simply, one of the finest men I have… More

The Jaffa-Berns Feud Revisited

– Steven F. Hayward, Powerline, September 11, 2015. Remarks from Claremont Institute APSA panel, September 2015.
Excerpt: Berns inclined toward a Hobbesian reading of Locke while Jaffa worked out an Aristotelian reading of Locke. Jaffa thought America the best regime, in the classical sense. Though he… More

The Man that Made the Constitution Relevant

– Video, American Enterprise Institute, September 17, 2015.
A short tribute video produced by the American Enterprise Institute about the life and work of Walter Berns.