TODAY, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IS ROUTINELY described as the most powerful person in the free world. It was not always thus. For one thing, the United States did not initially occupy a large space on the world stage. For another, the significance of the President's position within American government has changed enormously over time.

In 1789, fewer than one thousand people worked for the federal government. The State Department had only nine employees; the War Department began with just two. The government’s primary day-to-day concerns were collecting taxes and delivering the mail. Without a proper staff, the first President, George Washington, relied on just four men to advise him: the members of his Cabinet. Although that group was notably able, considerable duties often fell on Washington alone. Today, by contrast, the President has a staff of more than 1,800 people and oversees a bureaucracy with roughly 2.7 million employees.

WHEN THE HISTORIAN CHARLES BEARD WROTE IN 1913 that “[t]he Constitution was essentially an economic document,” he claimed too much. The founders intended the Constitution to protect many values, not just property. Nevertheless, property and contract rights ranked high among those that the Constitution was initially designed to safeguard. Prominent framers and ratifiers worried particularly about legislation excusing debtors from obligations to their creditors. They viewed such legislation as immoral because it violated the sanctity of promises and as imprudent because it discouraged commercial lending. (If the legislature could excuse promises to repay money, banks would be less willing to loan money in the first place.) In one of the rare provisions of the original Constitution that creates rights enforceable against the states (rather than the federal government), Article I, Section 10, provides that “[n]o State shall…pass any…Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts.” The Fifth Amendment forbids the federal government from taking “private property…for public use, without just compensation.” The Fourteenth Amendment, which was added to the Constitution in 1868, forbids state and local governments, as much as the national government, to deprive anyone of property without due process of law.

IN 1994, JENNIFER GRATZ APPLIED FOR ADMISSION TO THE University of Michigan. Gratz was a good student. Her adjusted high school grade-point average was 3.8 on a 4-point scale, and she had achieved a solid but not top-notch score on a standardized college admissions test. At many colleges, this record would have ensured admission. At the University of Michigan, it did not. After applying in the fall, Gratz received a letter in January notifying her that she would need to wait until April for a final decision: although she was “well qualified,” she was “less competitive than the students who have been admitted on first review.” In April a second letter arrived, this one with the news that Gratz had been rejected.

Unwilling to accept this result, Gratz filed suit in federal court, alleging that the University of Michigan had violated her Fourteenth Amendment right not to be deprived of “the equal protection of the laws.” In particular, Gratz, who is white, argued that Michigan unconstitutionally discriminated against her by granting race-based admissions preferences to members of historically underrepresented minority groups.