The Constitution and Judicial Supremacy: At Bench Memos Ed Whelan and Matthew J. Franck have two posts on the Senate resolution that declared John McCain a "natural born" citizen under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States. Matthew Franck's post reacts to today's Washington Post article by Matthew Dobbs. The post disputes Dobbs' claim that a Constitutional amendment might be necessary to clarify what is meant by "natural born" in Article II. Whelan's post adds to Franck's post by taking up Franck's statement, " 'Congress cannot legislatively change the meaning of the Constitution.' That's true. Somehow it never seems to occur to most law professors that neither can the Supreme Court judicially change the meaning of the Constitution." Whelan adds his own thoughts as they relate to Lawrence Solum’s “Semantic Originalism”.

The Takings Clause and the Fourth Amendment: Orin Kerr at Volokh Conspiracy posted his reaction to Ilya Somin's textualist reading of the Fifth and Fourth Amendments and their possible interplay. Kerr disagrees with Somin's argument that there is significance in the fact that the text of the Fifth Amendment does not distinguish between the taking of private property for the "public use" of investigating crime and other kinds of takings. He also specifically addresses Somin's point that the Framers didn't experience seizures of property owned by innocent third parties.