On the first Monday in October, the Supreme Court will begin its new term with one of the biggest cases on its docket.

Two petitions filed in recent months at the Supreme Court seek to settle the question of the ability of Congress to ban the ...

Thomas Jefferson was portrayed by Caleb Tracy and James Madison was portrayed by John Zak in partnership with Historic Philadelphia, Inc. Julie Silverbrook is chief content and learning officer at the ...

Gordon S. Wood reviews why the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that governments derive their just powers from “the consent of the governed” was one of the most important issues in the ...

Originalism is a theory of the interpretation of legal texts, including the text of the Constitution. Originalists believe that the constitutional text ought to be given the original public meaning ...

In 1798, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts with the support of the Adams Administration. The Alien Act granted the President unilateral authority to deport non-citizens who were subjects of ...

On May 8, 1866, Thaddeus Stevens delivered this speech introducing the Fourteenth Amendment in the U.S. House of Representatives. The leader of the Radical Republicans in the House, Stevens was a ...

Dr. Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute argues that the defense of liberty requires multiple answers to a fundamental political question: who rules? In Federalist No. 47, in the course of ...

Educational classroom resources about Road to the Convention: Articles of Confederation and American Democracy 1776-1787 from the National Constitution Center ...

Stephen Hopkins served as Rhode Island’s governor and he was the oldest member of the Continental Congress, except for his friend, Benjamin Franklin. Hopkins was the son of William and Ruth Wilkinson ...

John Locke (1632-1704) was the author of A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), Two Treatises on Government (1690), and other works. In the period ...

Jeffrey Rosen notes that the Founders viewed the pursuit of happiness as a lifelong quest for character improvement, and their belief that happiness is always something to be pursued rather than ...