The new issue of National Review carries my very favorable review (subscriber-only) of The Constitution: An Introduction, co-authored by Mike Paulsen and his son Luke. Here are my closing paragraphs:

Far from being heavy-handedly didactic, the Paulsens allow their lessons to emerge organically from the stories they tell. Consider, for example, their case against the myth of judicial supremacy. In the debate over ratification, they present Alexander Hamilton’s famous defense, in Federalist 78, of the power of judicial review. That power, Hamilton understood, derives from the supremacy of the Constitution, not of the judges. Because the Constitution is supreme over ordinary laws, judges must give effect to it rather than to laws that conflict with it. Chief Justice Marshall’s reasoning in Marbury “tracks almost precisely Hamilton’s argument” and, the Paulsens show, does “not rest on any claim of judicial supremacy.” They recount in detail Lincoln’s fidelity to his own readings of the Constitution and his refusal to abide by Dred Scott or Merryman. The attentive reader will glean that the myth of judicial supremacy is flatly contrary to the principle of constitutional supremacy from which the power of judicial review flows.
The Court, to be sure, has significant institutional advantages in advancing and entrenching its mistaken readings of the Constitution. More than four decades after the Court’s power grab on abortion, and on the apparent cusp of a radical ruling that would forbid the people in the various states to retain the perennial definition of marriage, it is difficult to be hopeful that citizens will soon reclaim their rightful powers of self-government on these and other matters. Reading and reflecting on the Paulsens’ book would be a very good way to start.

(Mike offered Bench Memos readers a brief introduction to his book in this post.)