10th
Anonymous
anon at anon.efga.org
Sat Nov 22 12:56:33 PST 1997
Professor George P. Fletcher of the Columbia
Law School notes
"Not only is [McVeigh's philosophy] in line with
the conceptions held by many of the nation's
founders," Mr. Fletcher writes in The New Republic,
"but it lives on today in the works of an influential
minority of legal scholars and advocates."
Mr. Fletcher thinks the problem is that we have
abandoned "the original Constitution" and adopted "a
new Constitution" without facing the historical
discontinuity this involves. In his words, "we do not
teach this historical rupture -- not in our grade schools,
not in our law schools. We are all good lawyers and
therefore, like Lincoln, we pretend that the second
Constitution is simply the natural continuation of the
founding document."
The first Constitution
limited the federal government to external relations
between the states, leaving alone such internal matters
as slavery. The second Constitution, instituted by the
Civil War, gave the federal government new powers to
intervene within the states through the 13th, 14th and
15th Amendments
The 10th Amendment, reserving to the states
and the people all powers not "delegated" to the federal
government, was not repealed or even modified. So
Congress' exercise of any power not granted is still a
usurpation, even under the "new" Constitution.
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