Catherine Zuckert's earliest published work was in the area of Politics and Literature. From the start she saw this work as an important supplement to the dominant forms of political science and American political thought. Her work in this area, especially her manifesto-like journal articles and her first book, Natural Right and the American Imagination, made the case that literature provides insight into both the internal and hidden lives of democratic citizens as well as into the elusive broader regime-character of the political community.

As in all or almost all Shakespeare plays the opening scenes of Macbeth are key to setting up the problem the play addresses. In his Scottish play Shakespeare uses the opening scenes to set the two main contexts in which the regicide, usurpation, tyranny, and fall of the tyrant occur. The two are, we might say, the earthly or political context and the cosmic or superhuman context represented by the witches. In presenting these two contexts Shakespeare appears to be engaging in a dialogue with Machiavelli's Prince, taking cues from Machiavelli's political analysis on how to understand the political character of Scotland and taking issue with Machiavelli's ultimate agenda of a conquest of Fortuna.

One of the main targets of Progressive constitutional critique was the system of separation of powers. Woodrow Wilson was especially critical of that feature of American constitutionalism. As has been noted by others, Wilson wanted to replace the separation of powers with the conceptual and institutional distinction between politics and administration. Wilson, however, had an extremely truncated and on the whole inaccurate view of the point and intended operation of separation of powers, as an examination of the doctrine in the philosophy of John Locke demonstrates.

Justice Stephen J. Field was the champion of a form of liberalism often said to be especially friendly to capitalism, the approach to the Constitution traditionally identified with “Lochnerism,” i.e., a laissez-faire oriented judicial activism. More recently a form of judicial revisionism has arisen, challenging the accepted descriptions of “Lochnerism” and of Field's jurisprudence. This article is an attempt to extend the revisionist approach by arriving at a more satisfactory understanding of the grounding of Field's jurisprudence in the natural rights philosophy. Field, it turns out, orienting around natural rights, was not so unambiguously friendly to capitalism as previous generations of scholars maintained, but his approach is surely friendlier than the constitutional theories that have replaced natural rights since Field's day.

The threat of terrorism once again raises some of the classic questions about constitutionalism: is it possible for constitutions to do what they aim to do—channel and control political power in such a way as to make it safe and beneficent for those under its rule but also competent to govern? Does not terrorism reraise the Schmittian problem of “the exception”, i.e., the situation of emergency that necessarily escapes all constitutional limitations? Although they did not face the problem of terrorism as we know it, the American founders developed three different models of constitutionalism, embodying three different ways of responding to emergent circumstances and yet remaining bound to the constitutionalist aspiration. We develop the main outlines of the three models both conceptually and historically and show how they continue to be relevant to current discussions of constitutionalism in the age of terror. Finally, we make a tentative effort to judge which of the three models is most able to do what constitutions should do in difficult times.

The treatment of the natural law in the Roman law is puzzling because the relationship between jus naturale and the two other forms of law, jus gentium and jus civile, is far from clear in the texts. Moreover, the jus naturale does not appear to have the dignity most readers expect it to have. This article attempts to sort out the relationships among the three types of jus by showing that the various classifications the jurists use are based on their perceptions of the complexities of nature as a source of right and on the attempt to work out a political embodiment of natural right.

One of the most difficult features of the Declaration of Independence is the assertion within it that “we hold these truths to be self-evident.…” Careful examination of the text of the Declaration reveals, however, that the truths are not in fact said to be “self-evident” but are rather, as a matter of healthy political practice, to be treated as if self-evident. Appreciating the status of the so-called self-evident truths above all brings into focus the problem of politics as civic education in this regime, especially as seen by Jefferson. It also helps focus attention on the structure of the Declaration and clarifies some recent scholarly disputes over the meaning and sources of the Declaration.

Jeremy Waldron's much noted book, God, Locke, and Equality, has put the topic of “God and Equality in Locke” at the center of many perhaps most, discussions of Locke these days. I am going to raise some critical objections to Waldron's interpretations, but all the more reason to begin by noting the very many things about this book that I admire.

First, he rejects the insistence by many of the most outspoken Locke scholars that a proper understanding of Locke—or any philosopher of the past—must be purely historical—that it must have nothing to do with us or our concerns, questions, or problems. Professor Waldron cuts through this claim as mere arbitrary assertion.

Second, many Locke scholars, often some of the same ones, insist that Locke's political writings must be understood in isolation from his philosophic writings, especially from his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke's editor, Peter Laslett, set the tone long ago when he pronounced judgment: “Locke did not write as a philosopher, applying to politics the implications of his views of reality as a whole.” Rather, according to Laslett, Locke appealed to or drew off of preexisting “modes of discourse.” This approach makes it very difficult to understand Locke as an integral personality, much less as a coherent author or as a thinker to be taken seriously. Waldron thus reopens the lines of communication between Locke's political and his philosophical writings and makes Locke a significant thinker, not just a corpse for the historians.

Ever since Leo Strauss and C. B. Macpherson, at almost the same moment, challenged the received view of Locke with their novel interpretations of his political philosophy, the question of how Locke wrote, and therefore of how he is to be read, has been prominent in most discussions of Locke. Strauss brought the issue to the fore by arguing the thesis that Locke engaged in “esoteric writing,” that is, that he intentionally said things he did not believe and sometimes withheld things he did, for the purpose of securing both his own safety and the greater likelihood of success of his philosophic project. Needless to say for so bold a claim, the Strauss thesis has not gone unopposed. Sharp issue has been taken both with the claim about Locke's esotericism and more substantively with the philosophic position Strauss attributes to Locke. It is clear that the two issues are intimately connected: the kind of “Locke” one finds depends to a very great extent on the kind of hermeneutical principles one adopts in approaching his work.

The issue of federalism at the Constitutional Convention was considerably more complex than it is normally taken to have been, and most of the prevailing understandings of the settlement of the federalism issue in the Constitution suffer from failing to appreciate that complexity. There were at least six rather distinct versions of federalism “on the table” in Philadelphia; most found embodiment in one or another of the major plans before the Convention, although two of the schemas that are especially important for understanding the final Constitution have gone almost entirely unrecognized because they were not incorporated in separate comprehensive plans. Neither the older view that the Constitution's federalism is a “bundle of compromises” nor the currently popular view that it is essentially a nationalist document with some few federal reservations holds up when examined in the light of the “federalisms” at the Convention.