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Recalling "a stitch in time saves nine"

By Mark Obbie

Jess Bravin has this readable, brief constitutional-law sidebar today to the ongoing story of the government's intervention in the banking industry. It's old hat to con-law scholars and even first-year law students. But, to the average reader, it's an enlightening and engaging history lesson about the clash between competing constitutional and policy views that tilted us toward an activist government in the Depression. He explores why there have been few attempts to rethink the liberal reading of the Constitution, and quotes skeptics who recognize a political inevitability when they see one. I know the ordinary reader -- even the ordinary Wall Street Journal reader -- didn't wake up today intent on studying the legal philosophies operating just beneath the surface of the Treasury's bold moves. But thanks to Bravin's research, reporting, and writing, the Journal made it easy to stumble across a little legal-history gem that puts current events in an understandable context.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on October 15, 2008 (boomark / email).