What does it mean to have a constitution? Scholars and students associated with Walter Murphy at Princeton University have long asked this question in their exploration of constitutional politics and judicial behavior. These scholars, concerned with the making, maintenance, and deliberate change of the Constitution, have made unique and significant contributions to our understanding of American constitutional law by going against the norm of court-centered and litigation-minded research. Beginning in the late 1970s, this new wave of academics explored questions ranging from the nature of...

Welfare and the Constitution defends a largely forgotten understanding of the U.S. Constitution: the positive or "welfarist" view of Abraham Lincoln and the Federalist Papers. Sotirios Barber challenges conventional scholarship by arguing that the government has a constitutional duty to pursue the well-being of all the people. He shows that James Madison was right in saying that the "real welfare" of the people must be the "supreme object" of constitutional government. With conceptual rigor set in fluid prose, Barber opposes the shared view of America's Right and Left: that the...