Constitutional Powers

The framers of the Constitution were very concerned about limiting the power of government and in securing the liberty of citizens. To strike a balance between authority and liberty is the central purpose of American Constitutional Law. To this end, they created three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial with separation of powers, and there were checks and balances of each branch against the other. This was to assure the guarantees of individual liberty. The Death of America occurred on November 5, 2024 as the fatal blow will culminate on January 20, 2025 with the ...

France entered 1789 as one of Europe’s greatest powers. Within four years, its ancient monarchy had fallen, its king had been executed, and a revolution launched in the name of liberty had descended into terror. The French Revolution places the upheaval itself on trial. Across twelve sharply focused cases, Gordon J. MacKenzie examines the institutions, decisions, and personalities that drove France from financial crisis to regicide: the Old Regime, Louis XVI, the Estates-General, the National Assembly, the power of Paris, the Church, Varennes, war, the overthrow of the monarchy, the ...

The War Powers Resolution: A Constitutional Crisis? by Gerald R. Ford offers a concise yet powerful examination of the struggle between presidential authority and congressional control over military action. Drawing on historical examples, legal analysis, and his own experience as President, Ford explores the origins and consequences of the 1973 War Powers Resolution. He questions its practicality, constitutionality, and impact on U.S. foreign policy during times of crisis. Blending real-world case studies with insightful commentary, this book sheds light on one of the most enduring debates ...

Written in the intense political and intellectual tumult of the early years of the Weimar Republic, Political Theology develops the distinctive theory of sovereignty that made Carl Schmitt one of the most significant and controversial political theorists of the twentieth century. Focusing on the...

What happens when the people no longer trust the institutions designed to protect them? In The Illusion of Checks and Balances, a U.S. Navy veteran examines the growing belief that America’s political safeguards are no longer functioning as intended. What was once presented as a balanced system of accountability now appears, to many Americans, to be a political structure increasingly controlled by party loyalty, institutional protection, and unchecked power. This powerful entry in the A Letter to America series explores: The weakening of public trust in government The collapse of ...

The presidency was never supposed to be a throne. The American president was designed to be powerful, but limited. Accountable, not untouchable. A national leader, not a national ruler. Yet over time, one office has become the center of American political life, absorbing more authority, more symbolism, more media attention, and more public fear than any democratic office should carry. In The Problem with the Presidency, Julian Mercer examines how the modern presidency became too powerful, too personal, and too dangerous to ignore. From war powers and executive orders to media spectacle, ...

What happens when a president’s term ends—but his command over a movement, a party, and a potential successor does not? Donald Trump cannot lawfully be elected president a third time under the Constitution as it stands. Yet that legal answer does not settle the more dangerous question: Could he remain in charge? Trump After 2028 separates the impossible from the improbable, the possible, and the probable. It examines the Twenty-Second Amendment, presidential succession, emergency powers, election postponement, contested electoral counts, vice-presidential and Speaker theories, refusal ...

In this groundbreaking portrait of corporate seizure of political power, We the Corporations reveals how American businesses won equal rights and transformed the Constitution to serve the ends of capital. Corporations - like minorities and women - have had a civil rights movement of their own and now possess nearly all the same rights as ordinary people. Uncovering the deep historical roots of Citizens United, Adam Winkler shows how that controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision was the capstone of a 200-year battle....

A clear-eyed investigation into the cultural, institutional, and political transformations reshaping public life. Is today’s “woke” movement a spontaneous cultural shift — or part of a deeper intellectual winnowing that echoes older collectivist doctrines? Woke Communism traces the ideas, institutions, and incentives that have taken root in universities, media, corporations, and public policy. Drawing on history, case studies, and policy analysis, this book argues that new forms of cultural activism have become entangled with institutional power in ways that reshape civic norms, ...

When does the erosion of a democracy actually begin? Not when the system collapses. Not when historians write about it. But when the first warning signs appear and citizens must decide whether to confront them or ignore them. When Did the End Begin? is a powerful civic reflection that asks one of the most important questions facing any nation: At what moment does a democracy begin to fade? Written as part of the Letters to America series, this thought-provoking short read examines how democratic systems slowly erode and why citizens play a critical role in protecting the institutions that ...

This audiobook examines how power operates once policy leaves speeches and enters the real world, where speed replaces caution, oversight weakens, and consequences often arrive long before accountability does. Rather than arguing ideology or partisanship, it tracks outcomes. It follows decisions through executive authority, agency enforcement, budgets, courts, markets, and foreign policy to reveal the widening gap between intention and impact.

What if we stopped arguing about politics long enough to ask a more important question: What is a country actually for? This book starts from first principles and builds upward. Not Republican versus Democrat. Not left versus right. Not ideology versus ideology. Instead, it asks what a healthy civilization must accomplish if it wants to survive, remain free, protect its people, reward excellence, reduce suffering, and create the conditions for human flourishing. From that starting point, the book develops a practical framework for government built around five priorities: survival, security,...

Britain voted. Someone made sure the result could not finish. At 22:06 on general-election night, seven British count centres are attacked. The obvious explanation is terrorism. The truth is far more dangerous. The bombs do not need to destroy the ballot papers. Three carefully chosen candidates are killed before their constituency results can be declared, triggering a lawful process that stops those elections and forces fresh polls. Four other counts are thrown into chaos but survive. By morning, Britain still has a government. It still has functioning courts, police, armed forces and ...

One county has food. Another has machine tools. Medicine remains behind guarded gates. Between them, people die while rival authorities argue over whose paper matters. Three years after the collapse, Central Kentucky can no longer survive as a collection of isolated communities. Daniel Mercer proposes a narrow union to protect trade routes, settle disputes, and coordinate defense. Lexington demands power based on population. Rural delegates demand equal votes. Producers want vetoes. Frankfort offers resources only if the counties submit to its disputed national authority. Then confidential ...

As the highest court in what has become the world's most powerful nation, The Supreme Court of the United States sits at the faultline between the ideal and the real, between justice and power, between the serene majesty of The Law and the sometimes bombastic, sometimes grubby disputes that define our politics. In the arguments before the court, principles clash with ambition and avarice, and it can be difficult to tell which is which. The decisions that the justices hand back are often wise and reasonable, but there have been moments of folly as well, and on more than one occasion it has ...

Though the Constitution was ratified in 1788, its impact on our lives is as recent as today's news. Informed by the latest scholarship and exploring the major themes that have shaped American constitutional history: federalism, the balance of powers, property, representation, equality, rights, and security, this book places constitutional history within the context of American political and social history. As our nation's circumstances have changed, so has our Constitution.

This political pamphlet calls on Congress to reclaim its sovereign powers to declare war and make laws. Rules of Congress shall be reformed: To require Congress to vote upon Declaration of War whenever the President initiates unauthorized military actions, and if not adopted, to stop use of military force To require Congress to intervene with timely acts to stop Executive abuse of powers by its deliberate defiance of laws and the Constitution By its effect the proposed Rules of Conscience will initiate the necessary Constitutional confrontation to assert and test the sovereign ...

The Supreme Court was designed to be independent. But independence was never supposed to mean unchecked power. In The Problem with the Supreme Court, Julian Mercer examines how nine unelected justices came to hold extraordinary authority over American life, often with little accountability, limited transparency, and lifetime power that can shape the country for generations. From abortion and gun rights to voting access, campaign finance, religious liberty, corporate power, presidential authority, and federal regulation, the Court no longer simply interprets the law from a distance. It helps...

What would Alexander Hamilton say about the national debt? What would Thomas Jefferson make of the First Amendment in the age of social media? What would George Washington think of a president who defied the courts? The Founders' Reckoning puts those questions directly to them. Over three nights in Washington, D.C., Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington argue about the republic they built and the country it became — voiced by artificial intelligence trained on their letters, their treatises, and their contradictions, and moderated by a journalist who refuses to let ...

Before there was a president, there was a fear of one. Fear doesn’t arrive with sirens. It walks in smiling, carrying authority in one hand and consequences in the other. Counterbalance turns on the lights. It reveals how power has been drifting inside the American system, not in headlines, but in the machinery beneath them. It shows how the separation of powers, our oldest safeguard, was designed to protect the Republic, and how the rise of the administrative state has bent that safeguard out of shape. What follows is a gripping, clear‑eyed journey through the forces distorting the ...