Has the Constitution Failed?

By Jacob G. Hornberger

Given the massive welfare-warfare state system under which Americans live, the natural assumption is that the Constitution failed in its mission to constrain the powers of the federal government.

Actually, though, that isn’t the case.

How, then, can these two points be reconciled? How can the Constitution be said to have succeeded in its mission given that, at the same time, we now live under a massive welfare-warfare state way of life?

During the first decade of American...