Constitutionalism is often analogized to Ulysses binding himself to the mast in order to resist the fatal call of the Sirens. But what is the equivalent of Ulysses’s ropes that might enable a political community to bind itself to constitutional rules? The positive puzzle of constitutionalism...

Fear and loathing of big and growing government has been a persistent theme in American political and constitutional discourse since the Founding. A correspondingly enduring and pervasive assumption in constitutional law and theory is that government officials are empire-builders,...