An earlier essay treated judicial review as a cornerstone. This one makes the case against it, the real argument, anchored in Alexander Bickel's counter-majoritarian difficulty: that unelected, life-tenured judges overruling elected legislatures is not obviously compatible with self-government. A citizen is better off knowing the strongest case against a power, even one they support.

Field Notes on the Republic was written and read by Michael Fowler. It was produced for Quorum (Supply Co.), an American civic purveyor. Music is "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," performed by the U.S. Military Academy Band, West Point.

When the First Amendment was ratified in 1791, the press was not a profession. It was a machine. Recovering the original meaning of the word changes what the freedom is and who holds it: not a guild privilege for credentialed journalists, but the right of anyone who uses the means of mass communication to reach the public.

Field Notes on the Republic was written and read by Michael Fowler. It was produced for Quorum (Supply Co.), an American civic purveyor. Music is "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," performed by the U.S. Military Academy Band, West Point.

Congress comes in two parts, and most Americans stop questioning it. But the two houses are the visible shape of the single hardest bargain of the Constitutional Convention, a deadlock between large states and small that nearly broke the room apart. Why the framers housed two competing fair principles in one legislature, and made them negotiate.

Field Notes on the Republic was written and read by Michael Fowler. It was produced for Quorum (Supply Co.), an American civic purveyor. Music is "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," performed by the U.S. Military Academy Band, West Point.