Shrinking Bill of Rights

The assertion of intrinsic, God given rights correlated with the decline of monarchical power. The United States’ understanding that all men and women are endowed with unalienable rights was a long and hard-fought conclusion. However, this article argues that the Bill of Rights has gradually changed from being the bold guardian of individual liberty originally envisioned. Ironically, this change can be attributed to the courts and the legislature

Proximate Sources of the Constitution

The average American who thinks of our Federal Document only in terms of the Philadelphia Convention may not have fully appreciated the fact that before the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, every American State had already achieved its constitutional independence and had established its own organic law, by which it should not only remain free from the foreign dominion of Great Britain, but should also remain an indestructible unit in The American Federal System. He must remember that the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union which leagued the alleged sovereign and independent States, were in force at the time of the convention and that many of the men delegated to attend that convention understood that these Articles were to be amended, not superseded. The instructions that they had received limited their authority to the revision of the Articles of Confederation and the proposing to Congress and the State legislatures, such improvements as were required therein. It will be my purpose in what follows to show how largely the Constitution was an emanation of the existing State Constitutions as also of the Articles of Confederation

What Will Become of Prohibition

Because of the substantial minority support for Prohibition and the Eighteenth Amendment, this article suggests that it would difficult, if not impossible, to repeal the amendment despite the fact that 3 in 5 Americans would support its repeal. The article looks at potential options of lessening the impact of the Eighteenth Amendment, including removing penalties for it, repealing State enforcement acts, and forbidding nullification of search warrant requirements. Finally, it looks at the quality of liquor as a solution to an unusually interesting and ultimately worthwhile problem