Although Thomas Jefferson claimed on his tombstone to be the author of the Declaration of Independence, this claim is significantly overstated. Jefferson drafted the initial document, but it was heavily edited by the Continental Congress. Moreover, Jefferson was not drafting the document in his own voice, and interpretations of the Declaration that rely on Jefferson’s intellectual peculiarities are strained. The voice of the document is best described, not as the voice of the states, or even of the delegates to the Continental Congress, but the voice of the American people.

This chapter turns back to the scope of national powers, and argues that the original meaning of the Commerce Clause limits Congress to regulating the exchange of goods across state lines, and critiques the Supreme Court’s modern, expansive interpretation of the clause. It demonstrates, however, that the national commerce power was understood to be exclusive, lending support to the modern dormant Commerce Clause doctrine that restricts states from interfering with interstate commerce and that many originalists have opposed. It argues that, as originally understood, States retain police powers to regulate the health, safety, morals, and welfare of their populations and can incidentally affect interstate commerce through police regulations, as long as they have a legitimate purpose and do not target interstate commerce. Congress, similarly, could incidentally affect the states’ police powers or private conduct beyond the enumeration of powers so long as it was genuinely exercising its power over interstate commerce, such as when it closed the channels of interstate commerce to goods produced with child labor. This formalist approach reveals a symmetry in the original distribution of power between Congress and the states.

This chapter examines the development of uniform company law within the EU, focusing on supranational company forms such as the Societas Europaea (SE) and the Societas Cooperativa Europaea (SCE). It explores the legal framework governing their formation, structure and operation, highlighting the balance between EU regulation and national company laws. The chapter assesses the goals of legal harmonization, cross-border mobility and enhanced corporate flexibility. It also considers the practical challenges and limited uptake of these forms, along with their potential in promoting European economic integration. Comparative insights and recent legislative developments are discussed to evaluate future prospects for uniform company law.

The references to liberty and equality in the Declaration have been contested from the very beginning. Although some have argued that they had no application to slavery, many people in the late eighteenth century perceived them as clearly inconsistent with slavery. These references have triggered equally conflicting responses from courts, where judges have relied on them to abolish minimum wage laws and to strike down regulations of businesses. Other judges have invoked these references in support of more equal legislative chambers and same-sex marriage. Supporters of every conceivable position have relied on this part of the Declaration. These references have become in effect a national Rorhschach test – one sees in them what one is already inclined to see. Given this contested history, courts invoking this language should do so with caution.

Americans looking back at the Declaration did so through court cases, political debate, and celebrations in popular culture. Numerous judicial decisions beginning in the late eighteenth century and continuing through the twentieth century have upheld the view that the Declaration of Independence created one nation, the United States of America. This was also the view of some of the greatest lawyers of the mid nineteenth century: Joseph Story, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln. Even Andrew Jackson, largely seen as a proponent of states’ rights, embraced this view in the nullification dispute with South Carolina. And ordinary Americans have celebrated the Fourth of July as the birth of a nation from the very beginning. For the thirteen independent nations view to be correct, all of these decisions, statements, and celebrations would have to be wrong. (They are not.)

This chapter provides an overview of corporate governance within the European Union, focusing on the regulatory framework that shapes board structures, shareholder rights and stakeholder engagement. It analyses key EU directives, codes and case law that promote transparency, accountability and sustainable business practices. The chapter explores challenges in harmonizing governance standards across diverse legal systems and the role of corporate governance in enhancing investor confidence and long-term value creation. Additionally, it discusses recent developments addressing environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria, emphasizing the evolving nature of corporate responsibility in the EU context.

This chapter examines the President’s constitutional role in overseeing law execution, arguing that the Executive Vesting Clause and Take Care Clause grant the President authority to supervise, but not personally execute, national laws. It posits that the President’s power includes appointing and removing principal officers without congressional interference, as affirmed in the "Decision of 1789" and in Myers v. United States (1926). It explores the Appointments Clause, links the removal and appointment powers, and offers a novel explanation for why the Constitutional Convention did not discuss the removal power. It also addresses inferior officers, whose removal may be vested in department heads with potential tenure protections, provided adequate control mechanisms exist. Along with the next chapter, however, this Chapter suggests that the President cannot necessarily direct principal officers in the exercise of their discretionary duties unless statutorily authorized. The chapter proposes a nuanced view: the President can demand information and remove officers but lacks a constitutional right to control their actions, distinguishing this original account of presidential power from other “unitary executive” and “persuader-in-chief” theories.

This chapter examines judicial supremacy, arguing that while judicial review is inherent in judicial power under a written constitution, the Supreme Court is not the final arbiter of constitutional meaning. Through an exploration of Lincoln’s response to Dred Scott (1857) in his debates with Stephen Douglas, it defends “departmentalism,” where each branch interprets the Constitution for itself in exercising its assigned functions, and rejects Douglas’s claim that the Court’s rulings are the supreme law. Lincoln maintained that court decisions bind parties to a case, but their holdings need not be treated as a “political rule,” at least not until the constitutional question is fully settled. The chapter then turns to "executive supremacy," and posits that ordinarily the President must faithfully execute laws despite any constitutional misgivings, with a narrow exceptions for laws that target exclusive executive prerogatives such as pardons or military command. This formalist approach, rooted in Founding-era practices, balances judicial review with coordinate branch authority, preventing judicial or executive supremacy and preserving the Constitution’s separation of powers.

This chapter examines Congress’s taxing and spending powers, arguing that the Constitution’s first clause in the enumeration of powers originally granted only a power to tax for national purposes, not an independent power to spend for the general welfare. Textual and historical evidence, including from the Articles of Confederation and Committee of Detail, supports this as the best reading, with spending permissible only under the Necessary and Proper Clause to further enumerated powers. The chapter critiques modern doctrine, which recognizes a broad spending power allowing Congress to influence state policies indirectly, as in South Dakota v. Dole, by attaching conditions to funds. It proposes a test distinguishing genuine spending (e.g., disaster relief) from coercive regulatory attempts (e.g., conditioning funds on state policy changes), which usurp state functions. This formalist approach, rooted in the Constitution’s federalist structure, seeks to limit Congress’s ability to undermine state autonomy through expansive spending, preserving the original balance of federal and state authority critical to the Constitution’s enduring success.

This introduction to Part One introduces the topic of why the ceremonial parchment in the National Archives should not be considered the definitive text of the Declaration of Independence.

This chapter introduces the paradox in a constitutional order in which there is parliamentary supremacy: the Parliament may make any law it pleases, including a law that undermines the rule of law in such a way as to undermine parliamentary supremacy. It then sketches the tension in A. V. Dicey’s classic treatment of the two ‘constitutional fundamentals’ of parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. It shows how deeply that tension is embedded in the common law and how post-war developments in the European Convention of Human Rights, the Human Rights Act 1998, and the institutional machinery of the constitutional order deepen the tension by expressing an ever-firmer commitment to human rights while preserving parliamentary supremacy. The chapter sets up the argument of the next chapter: that the Rwanda Act could both be perfectly valid and unconstitutional in that it introduced a dangerous incoherence into the UK constitutional order.

The parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence, enshrined in the National Archives, is not the most relevant text of the document. The correct text is the text distributed to the American people – the Dunlap Broadside, which was printed on the night of July 4, 1776. The parchment copy was not created until later, for ceremonial purposes, and its eccentric handwriting should not be taken as definitive, a mistake that many historians have made.

This chapter highlights the way in which Ekins and his co-authors in the Judicial Power Project market their publications politically as a backdrop to the debate over the Rwanda Bill. The chapter then describes the Supreme Court’s judgment that declared Rwanda ‘unsafe’ and how the subsequent Treaty between the UK and Rwanda plus the Bill, far from making Rwanda safe from the perspective of human rights law, rendered such law irrelevant. That makes it evident that Ekins and his coauthors were attempting to defend the indefensible. But what is really striking is that they wanted the Act to excise the few slivers of judicial review it preserved, thus giving the executive a completely free hand. The chapter also exposes the inconsistencies in their approach to international law in their different attempts to show that breaking international law is consistent with both the rule of law and international law itself.