A Powerful Government and a Weak Nation
by Jacob Hornberger, Future of Freedom Foundation One of the prime characteristics of our age is the tendency of Americans to conflate the federal government and our country. We see this especially in the realm of foreign policy, where people praise the troops for their service to their country when, in fact, the troops are doing nothing more than serving the national-security branch of the federal government. In actuality, the federal government and the country are two separate and distinct entities, a phenomenon reflected by the Bill of Rights, which expressly protects the country from the federal government. Suppose the following question were posed to the American people of today: “What do you believe is the biggest threat to the freedom and well-being of the …
The Judiciary Was Excluded From Policymaking
by Raoul Berger EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an excerpt of the book (chapter 16) Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment, Foreword by Forrest McDonald (2nd ed.) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997). It is a singular fact that the most significant single piece of evidence that the Framers excluded the judiciary from policymaking—rejection of their participation in a Council of Revision of legislation—went unnoticed by bench and bar until it was called to their attention by a political scientist, Benjamin F. Wright. Not the least remarkable aspect of judicial neglect of this history is that it should finally be invoked by Justices Black (1965) and Douglas (1968), oblivious to the shattering effect that it has on their own sweeping policymaking …