This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, April 28th, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown. What kind of Constitution do we truly have?

And how has the Legal Academy changed its understanding? kind of Constitution do we truly have?

And how has the Legal Academy changed

its understanding of that key document?

Randy Barnett describes that in his new book,

Our Republican Constitution, securing the liberty and sovereignty of We the People.

We spoke last week.

Something that surprised me, and maybe it shouldn't have,

was the idea that southern states during the era of slavery were not really

content with this notion, the so-called states' rights, a term I've never really cared for, and were wanted to use

the power of the federal government to enhance their position as slaveholders?

Absolutely.

It begins with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793,

where Congress passes a law to enforce the Fugitive Slave Clause,

the Fugitive Slaveitive Slave Clause, as future Republican Sam and Chase argued,

it doesn't have an enforcement provision, it doesn't have a Congress empowering provision,

unlike the Full Faith and Credit Clause in Article 4, which does.

But Congress enacted this fugitive slave law and reenacted another one in 1850 when the first one didn't prove effective enough.

But what was happening is that the South were starting to take their slaves into the North

accompanying them when they went to the north.

And then they insisted they had a constitutional right to do this.

...