The Founding Record

The Founding Record

• 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-Seventh Amendment

  Proposed in 1789. Ratified in 1992.

• Federalist No. 10

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

• Federalist No. 33

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

• Federalist No. 43

  Why treason is the one crime the Constitution defines itself.

• Federalist No. 51

  The design assumes ambition rather than virtue.

• Federalist No. 70

  Unity in the executive, defended as accountability rather than power.

• Federalist No. 78

  Neither force nor will, but merely judgment.

• Federalist No. 84

  The argument against a Bill of Rights, made by the man who lost it.

• Brutus No. 1

  The case against ratification, made first and made best.