Tag: Supreme Court

Topics

Books

Buck v. Bell: Due Process of Law?

– Western Political Quarterly 6:4 (December 1953).
Excerpt: A quarter of a century has passed since Justice Holmes provided the eugenical sterilization movement with a constitutional blessing and an epigrammatic battle cry. His opinion for… 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

The Sources of Law

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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).

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

Dirty Words

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

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

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

Blue Movies

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

From the Ashes Comes the Rebirth of Patriotism

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

Patriot Practitioner

– American Enterprise, September 1, 2002.
Excerpt: World War II Navy veteran, scholar of Constitutional law and political philosophy, prolific author, patriot, and gentleman–those are just a few terms to describe AEI’s… 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

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

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

Essays

Buck v. Bell: Due Process of Law?

– Western Political Quarterly 6:4 (December 1953).
Excerpt: A quarter of a century has passed since Justice Holmes provided the eugenical sterilization movement with a constitutional blessing and an epigrammatic battle cry. His opinion for… 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

The Sources of Law

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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).

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

Dirty Words

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

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

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

Blue Movies

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

From the Ashes Comes the Rebirth of Patriotism

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

Patriot Practitioner

– American Enterprise, September 1, 2002.
Excerpt: World War II Navy veteran, scholar of Constitutional law and political philosophy, prolific author, patriot, and gentleman–those are just a few terms to describe AEI’s… 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

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

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

Commentary

Buck v. Bell: Due Process of Law?

– Western Political Quarterly 6:4 (December 1953).
Excerpt: A quarter of a century has passed since Justice Holmes provided the eugenical sterilization movement with a constitutional blessing and an epigrammatic battle cry. His opinion for… 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

The Sources of Law

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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).

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

Dirty Words

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

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

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

Blue Movies

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

From the Ashes Comes the Rebirth of Patriotism

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

Patriot Practitioner

– American Enterprise, September 1, 2002.
Excerpt: World War II Navy veteran, scholar of Constitutional law and political philosophy, prolific author, patriot, and gentleman–those are just a few terms to describe AEI’s… 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

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

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

Multimedia

Buck v. Bell: Due Process of Law?

– Western Political Quarterly 6:4 (December 1953).
Excerpt: A quarter of a century has passed since Justice Holmes provided the eugenical sterilization movement with a constitutional blessing and an epigrammatic battle cry. His opinion for… 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

The Sources of Law

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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).

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

Dirty Words

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

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

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

Blue Movies

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

From the Ashes Comes the Rebirth of Patriotism

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

Patriot Practitioner

– American Enterprise, September 1, 2002.
Excerpt: World War II Navy veteran, scholar of Constitutional law and political philosophy, prolific author, patriot, and gentleman–those are just a few terms to describe AEI’s… 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

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

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

Teaching

Buck v. Bell: Due Process of Law?

– Western Political Quarterly 6:4 (December 1953).
Excerpt: A quarter of a century has passed since Justice Holmes provided the eugenical sterilization movement with a constitutional blessing and an epigrammatic battle cry. His opinion for… 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

The Sources of Law

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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).

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

Dirty Words

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

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

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

Blue Movies

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

From the Ashes Comes the Rebirth of Patriotism

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

Patriot Practitioner

– American Enterprise, September 1, 2002.
Excerpt: World War II Navy veteran, scholar of Constitutional law and political philosophy, prolific author, patriot, and gentleman–those are just a few terms to describe AEI’s… 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

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

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