Law Commons^™

Book Review: Michael Stokes Paulsen And Luke Paulsen, The Constitution: An Introduction, Shlomo Slonim

Case Western Reserve Law Review

Anyone interested in learning more about the Constitution, its interpretation and development over the past two-plus centuries, and which issues are today the most critically divisive, will find this work to be a superb and eminently readable introduction. It is instructive and enlightening without being ponderous. The prose is crisp and straightforward, unburdened by legal jargon. There are no footnotes or endnotes. And the reader requires no legal dictionary to appreciate the thrust of the discussion at each point.

What The Constitution Means By “Duties, Imposts, And Excises”—And "Taxes" (Direct Or Otherwise), Robert G. Natelson

Case Western Reserve Law Review

This Article recreates the original definitions of the U.S. Constitution’s terms “tax,” “direct tax,” “duty,” “impost,” “excise,” and “tonnage.” It draws on a greater range of Founding-Era sources than accessed heretofore, including eighteenth-century treatises, tax statutes, and literary sources, and it corrects several errors made by courts and previous commentators. It concludes that the distinction between direct and indirect taxes was widely understood during the Founding Era and that the term “direct tax” was more expansive than commonly realized.

The Article identifies the reasons the Constitution required that direct taxes be apportioned among the states by population. It concludes that …