John Taylor’s Forgotten Warning about Judges Rewriting the Constitution.

[Bigun]

John Taylor’s Forgotten Warning about Judges Rewriting the Constitution.

“It is … the natural enemy of our home-bred form of government, and ought to awaken the resistance of all legislative and judicial departments, and the detestation of every person not enriched by this ruinous commerce.”

That warning came from John Taylor of Caroline over two centuries ago. The subject: What we now call “legislating from the bench.”

He wrote an entire book smacking down Chief Justice John Marshall, who followed Alexander Hamilton’s playbook to twist the necessary and proper clause into a blank check to justify creating a national bank.

Taylor saw exactly where this was heading. Judges rewriting the Constitution to create unlimited federal power.

CONSTRUCTION

In 1819, the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in McCulloch v Maryland. On the surface, it was about whether states could tax a bank. But John Taylor saw the con underneath. The Court had justified a national bank using powers the Constitution never delegated.

Taylor responded by publishing one of the most important and most forgotten books of the era: Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated. ...

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