Under a written Constitution, we are governed by the rule of law, not of men—but this is easier said than done.

In this conversation, Ari discusses with Adam White the role of the Supreme Court and determining constitutionality. Americans rely on the Supreme Court to review laws passed by Congress and state legislatures; most Americans would agree with Chief Justice John Marshall’s famous statement, two centuries ago, that it “is emphatically the province and duty” of the Court “to say what the law is.” Yet there is danger in giving judges too much power over our democratic republic, and thus most Americans would also agree with Abraham Lincoln’s observation, in his first inaugural address, that if national policy on “vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court,” then “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

How do American statesmen, judges, and scholars define the "rule of law" in American democracy?

Adam White is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an assistant professor of law at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, where he also directs the law school’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.

Learn more about the course here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zp67k0be9ik7jx7/What%20is%20the%20Rule%20of%20Law%20-%20Reader.pdf?dl=0