The Founding Record

The Founding Record

• The Eighth Amendment

  Bail, fines, and punishment, each bounded by proportion.

• The Ninth Amendment

  The list is not the limit. Rights not written down are still yours.

• The Tenth Amendment

  Federal power is what the text grants. Everything else is reserved.

• The Eleventh Amendment

  The first time an amendment was used to overturn a Supreme Court ruling.

• The Twelfth Amendment

  A structural repair written by a deadlock.

• The Thirteenth Amendment

  Abolition, and the exception written into the same sentence.

• The Fourteenth Amendment, Section One

  Citizenship, due process, and equal protection applied against the states.

• The Fifteenth Amendment

  The ground was barred. The mechanisms were not.

• The Sixteenth Amendment

  A limit removed rather than a protection added.

• The Seventeenth Amendment

  The states lost their seat at the federal table.

• The Eighteenth Amendment

  The only amendment aimed at citizens rather than government, and the only one repealed.

• The Nineteenth Amendment

  Forty-two years between introduction and ratification.

• The Twentieth Amendment

  Closing the four-month gap between rejection and departure.

• The Twenty-First Amendment

  The proof that the process runs both ways.

• The Twenty-Second Amendment

  A custom written down after it was broken.

• The Twenty-Third Amendment

  Electors for the capital, capped at the smallest state's share.

• The Twenty-Fourth Amendment

  Closing the mechanism the Fifteenth Amendment's text did not reach.

• The Twenty-Fifth Amendment

  Succession, and a mechanism for declaring a President unable to serve.

• The Twenty-Sixth Amendment

  Ratified in about three months. The fastest in American history.

• The Twenty-Seventh Amendment

  Proposed in 1789. Ratified in 1992.

• Federalist No. 10

  Faction is incurable. The design answer is scale and structure.

• Federalist No. 26

  Why the two-year army limit was meant to be a real check.

• Federalist No. 29

  The militia argument, made by the Constitution's strongest defender.

• Federalist No. 33

  Acts outside the granted powers are usurpation, not supreme law.