Greider  on Krugman

As threatening losses and dislocations accumulated for the US, the celebrated economist was like Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss, assuring everyone not to worry. Pay no attention to those critics dwelling on the dark side of globalization, he said. Economic theory confirms that free trade is the best of all possible policies in this best of all possible worlds. 

A good many Americans did not believe him, mainly working people who saw their jobs and middle-class wages decimated by the processes of globalizing production. Krugman said they didn’t see the big picture. Educated professionals whose own livelihoods were not threatened by globalization were more likely to embrace Krugman’s perspective. While he never won the debate with the broad public, his argument prevailed where it counts – among the political elites who influence government policy-making. Both political parties, every president from Reagan to Obama, embraced the same free-trade strategy: support US multinational corporations in global competition, as their success is bound to lift the rest of the country.

Sandy Levinson:  Scalia v. John Marshall
Marshall, from McCulloch vs Maryland

A constitution, to contain an accurate detail of all the subdivisions of which its great powers will admit, and of all the means by which they may be carried into execution, would partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It would, probably, never be understood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires, that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects, be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves. That this idea was entertained by the framers of the American constitution, is not only to be inferred from the nature of the instrument, but from the language. Why else were some of the limitations, found in the 9th section of the 1st article, introduced? It is also, in some degree, warranted, by their having omitted to use any restrictive term which might prevent its receiving a fair and just interpretation. In considering this question, then, we must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding.

Balkin on Verdi, working too hard to prove what should be an obvious point.