News Release

February 2, 2004

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Restoring the Lost Constitution
Courts are misreading the Constitution and wiping out liberties

The U.S. Constitution found in school textbooks and under glass in Washington is not the one the Supreme Court enforces today, according to a new Cato Institute book published by Princeton University Press.

In Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty, Cato Senior Fellow and Boston University School of Law Professor Randy E. Barnett argues that since the nation's founding, and especially since the 1930s, the courts have been cutting holes in the original Constitution and its amendments to eliminate the parts that impede the growth and power of government. The Supreme Court has rendered toothless the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the process, the Constitution has been lost.

Barnett establishes the original meaning of the lost clauses and offers a practical way to restore them to their central role in constraining government: the adoption of a Presumption of Liberty to give the benefit of the doubt to citizens when laws restrict their rightful exercises of liberty. In striking down an anti-sodomy statute last term in the case of Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court employed a version of the Presumption of Liberty. In this book, Barnett explains the potentially revolutionary implications of this decision and how the Court's reasoning can be extended beyond this case.

In a presentation that is clearly argued and remarkably accessible, Barnett proposes adopting a Presumption of Liberty that would put into effect the entire Constitution as originally enacted and amended. He will be carrying his message to more than forty law school campuses this winter and spring. For more information about his speaking tour, visit www.restoringthelostconstitution.org.