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Full text of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, etched in stone.

What Does It Mean To Make America "Christian?"

The "Christian Amendment" and the push for Christianity to be established as the national religion of the United States.

The Missing Right: A Constitutional Right to Vote

In the era of the voting wars, the right to vote is itself a subject of continued partisan, regional, and racial conflict.
Civil War rifles mounted on wall
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Straight Shot: Guns in America

On who has had access to guns in the U.S., and what those guns have meant to the people who have owned them.

Founding Fathers, Founding Villains

A review of a handful of new books that embody the new liberal originalism.
Lithograph of James Madison from Portrait and Biographical Album of Washtenaw County, Michigan, 1891, Wikimedia.

The Founders’ Muddled Legacy on the Right to Bear Arms Is Killing Us

A case of 18th-century politicking has stymied our ability to deal with a 21st-century crisis.
Poster for U.S. Census reading "Have your papers ready," featuring Uncle Sam writing in book
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Beyond Numbers: A History of the U.S. Census

To mark the culmination of Census 2010, we explore the fascinating story of how Americans have counted themselves.

Prior Convictions

Did the Founders want us to be faithful to their faith?

Dead or Alive: Originalism as Popular Constitutionalism in Heller

Was the 2008 Heller decision a victory for originalism or a living Constitution?

Don’t Despair About the Supreme Court

In 2005, Howard Zinn explained why it was naive to depend on the Court to defend the rights of marginalized Americans.
Caricature drawing of Charles Black

Pursuing the Pursuit of Happiness

Traditional Supreme Court precedent may depend too much on substantive due process to safeguard human rights.

To Keep and Bear Arms

A challenge to the "Standard Model" scholars who hold that the Second Amendment protects individual gun rights.
Painting of Abraham Lincoln

The Election in November

The Atlantic’s editor endorsed Abraham Lincoln for presidency in the 1860 election, correctly predicting it would prove to be “a turning-point in our history.”
A monument of the Minutemen line in Concord, Massachusetts.
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The Dangerous Afterlives of Lexington and Concord

How a myth about farmers taking on the British has fueled more than two centuries of exclusionary nationalism.
Grave of John Quincy Adams.

From Son of the Revolution to Old Man Eloquent

A new Library of America edition of John Quincy Adams’s writings demonstrates the enduring appeal—and real shortcomings—of his revolutionary conservatism.
A mustache and a monocle with the preamble to the Constitution in its sights.

The Other Fear of the Founders

America’s early leaders were worried not only about demagogues like Donald Trump, but about the rise of an antidemocratic, wealthy elite that goads such men on.
A crib drawn with Stars and Stripes symbolism.

Birthright Citizenship Is a Sacred Guarantee

The attack on it is a violation of the nation’s post–Civil War rebirth.
The Battle for the Mind (Tim LaHaye, 1980); from Creationism to Christian Nationalism

The Battle for the Mind (Tim LaHaye, 1980); from Creationism to Christian Nationalism

Tim LaHaye bridged Reagan-era anti-Communism to today’s Christian Nationalism, opposing humanism, evolution, and secularism, emphasizing biblical morality.
Richard Nixon surrounded by thumbs up emojis.

Hero of 2024: A Half-Century Later, Richard Nixon Was Finally Vindicated

Nixon was quietly vindicated by the Supreme Court in its Trump v. United States. A half-century later, the Supreme Court made clear that he was right all along.

The Sentimentalizing of Federalist Ten

Ideas about history still prevailing in the liberal resistance to Trump keep pushing us backward.
Elon Musk reacts on stage during a rally for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden.

America’s Decline & Fall

The founders anticipated someone like Trump partly because they’d been reading Edward Gibbon’s 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'
John Locke

Review of "America's Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life"

We see what we want to see from philosophers such as Locke not because he wrote for our time (or “all time”) but because we imagine he did.
President Woodrow Wilson riding as a passenger in a two seater car with his chauffeur, George Howard.

States’ Rights or Inalienable Rights?

Some early progressives may have been advocates of states’ rights, but they misunderstood the philosophy of the American Founding.

How Woodrow Wilson’s Privileged Southern Upbringing Influenced His Love Life

In Wilson’s chivalric framework, women were required to be submissive precisely so that men could protect the weaker sex.
Supreme Court building.

Lifetime Tenure for Supreme Court Justices Has Outlived Its Usefulness

While letting justices serve during “good behavior” was designed to encourage impartiality, it now tends to promote the opposite effect.
A duel.
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Mud-Slinging and Deadly Duels: How Negative Campaigning Evolved

The factionalized press was the site of campaigning in the U.S.'s first contested presidential elections.
Photo of Supreme Court Justices posing in gowns.

The Origin of Specious

Originalism is not so much an idea as a legal-industrial complex divided into three parts—the academic, the jurisprudential, and the political.
Chief Justice Earl Warren (left), President Richard Nixon (center), and Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (right).

I Argued ‘U.S. v. Nixon.’ The Supreme Court’s New Ruling on Presidential Immunity Appalled Me.

Fifty years after ruling against a corrupt president, the Court has now decided that presidents are above the law.
Chief Justice John Roberts attending the State of the Union.

J. Roberts et al. v. A. Lincoln

As the Supreme Court invents a law to negate all others, Chief Justice John Roberts now ranks just below Roger Taney.
Chief Justice John Roberts at the State of the Union on March 7.

The Supreme Court Turns the President Into a King

The conservative justices have ignored history altogether and created a shocking new precedent: The president is above the law.

The Electoral College and Slavery

It's easy to get this one wrong.

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