Is New York Times v. Sullivan, the case in which the Supreme Court sharply limited libel suits by public officials—a group later expanded to “public figures”—now on shaky ground? 　　Not long ago that would have been unthinkable. But nowadays, particularly in the wake of a stiff and scholarly Clarence Thomas dissent in McKee v. Cosby, it’s become so thinkable that...

　　Originalism today is predominant yet divided. Courts regularly invoke original meaning, but originalist scholars still debate what interpretation itself requires. At the center of that division is the interpretation-construction distinction. Interpretation is the process of determining the meaning of a constitutional provision. Construction begins only when that meaning is deemed indeterminate—that is, when it is thought to run out—and the...

　　Editors Note: This is the third and final essay in a symposium on the executive removal cases, Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook. The first essay can be read here and the second essay here. 　　For most court watchers, the blockbuster case of 2026 was the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara. But for teachers of National Powers cases like...

　　Editors Note: This is the second of three essays in a symposium on the executive removal cases, Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook. The first essay can be read here and the third essay will be published tomorrow. 　　On June 29, the Supreme Court decided two cases that together transformed the law of removal. In Trump v. Slaughter, the...

　　The rapid rise in popularity of democratic socialism has generated a significant amount of commentary. Most of it has focused on its advocates’ substantive policy demands. Many may not realize that institutional structure has also featured prominently in the new socialists’ rhetoric. Titled “Workers Deserve More,” the 2026 Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) platform argues that the United States Constitution...

　　Editors Note: This is the first of three essays in a symposium on the executive removal cases, Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook. The following essays will be published on Tuesday and Wednesday. 　　Chief Justice John Roberts’s twentieth year on the Supreme Court demonstrates the contradictions of his career. There is Chief Justice Roberts, the institutionalist, who strategically guides...

　　June is the usual month for the convening of Presbyterian assemblies, but the jewel in the crown of Presbyterian reforms, replacing bishops with lengthy committee meetings, seems less impressive today than it did in 1560 when the Scots held their first General Assembly. In fact, the June assemblies have genuine significance for the history of the Americans, which can be...

　　The Supreme Court ended its latest term with a spectacle that even the most jaded court-watcher may find diverting: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson swinging hammer and tongs at Justice Clarence Thomas over the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Thomas, with the serene indifference of a man who has heard it all before, mostly declined to swing back. 　　The occasion was...

　　Nowadays no one, I imagine, reads the novels of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the immensely prolific and once popular Victorian writer, who is remembered principally for three things: first, for having tried to commit his wife to a madhouse; second, for having coined the phrase the pen is mightier than the sword and third for having inspired an annual prize given for...

　　The new Trump Accounts, offering tax-advantaged investment accounts to every American born between January 1, 2026, and December 31, 2028, were officially launched a month ago on the 4th of July. The US Treasury deposited $1,000 in the accounts of 6 million Americans who signed up (out of the 14.3 million eligible); by the end of July, the number enrolled...

　　Let’scall it the Vanderbilt Report for short, though its formal name is “Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences.”And none of its ten authors holds a position at Vanderbilt University.It is the Vanderbilt Report because it was commissioned by the chancellor of Vanderbiltand Washington Universities, Daniel Diermeier and Andrew D. Martin, both of whom...

　　In his book By the Dawn’s Early Light, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts paints a picture of a not-so-recent American past—the 1980s and 1990s—that was a veritable golden age. He invokes—from a political ad, of all things—a time when “beautiful” and “young” couples got married, when the gender of those same people was always men and women, which those marriages...