BOOK: Richard PRIMUS, The Oldest Constitutional Question. Enumeration and Federal Power (Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 2025, 448 p. ISBN 9780674293595, € 45,95

 

(image source: Harvard)

Abstract:

A groundbreaking challenge to a core principle of constitutional law, arguing that congressional action is not limited by the legislative branch’s textually enumerated powers. Every law student learns that the federal government is constrained to act only according to its enumerated powers, meaning that Congress can do what the Constitution expressly authorizes it to and nothing more. Yet Richard Primus contends that this longstanding orthodoxy—allegedly required by the text of the Constitution, the Framers’ vision, and the logic of federalism—is fundamentally flawed.

On the author:

 Richard Primus is Theodore J. St. Antoine Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. He clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the US Supreme Court and is the author of The American Language of Rights.

(source: Legal History Blog) 

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