The Virginia Plan and the General Welfare Clause – Tenth Amendment Center

The Virginia Plan and the General Welfare Clause – Tenth Amendment Center
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following commentary is an excerpt from Professor Natelson’s paper, The General Welfare Clause and the Public Trust: An Essay in Original Understanding, published in The Kansas Law Review (Vol. 52, p. 1, 2003). The paper examines the original understanding behind the U.S. Constitution’s controversial “General Welfare Clause.” Based on Founding-Era word usage, public representations by advocates of the Constitution, and other historical evidence, the paper concludes that the General Welfare Clause is a limitation on the taxing power. The position of the modern Supreme Court — that the Clause authorizes spending for the general welfare — is based on insufficient research and an anachronistic understanding of language. CLICK HERE FULL THE FULL PAPER (.pdf)
The inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation as a governing charter induced the delegates at the federal convention to look for other models. The perils of extreme decentralization, coupled with the understandable influence of British precedents, help explain why the first instinct of convention leaders was to propose a “consolidated” rather than a “federal” union.