James Madison

  • Was U.S. vs. Wong Kim Ark Wrongly Decided?

    ByP.A. Madison
    52 Comments

    In reading the majorities opinion in Wong Kim Ark, one cannot help but wonder why so much emphasis is being placed on such obscure and irrelevant historical overviews as colonial and foreign law. With two previous court decisions, a United States Attorney General Opinion over the meaning of the Fourteenth’s citizenship clause, and law previously made over alien citizenship via birth, leaves one to wonder what is going on here? Deeper into the decision, Justice Horace Gray (writing for the majority) reveals…

  • What James Madison Might Well Tell Congress Today

    ByP.A. Madison
    7 Comments

    James Madison Jr., House of Representatives, February 1792: I, sir, have always conceived–I believe those who proposed the Constitution conceived, and it is still more fully known, and more material to observe that those who ratified the Constitution conceived–that this is not an indefinite Government, deriving its power from the general terms prefixed to the specified powers, but a limited Government tied down to the specified powers which explain and define the general terms. The gentlemen who contend for a contrary doctrine…