Liberty and Equality- The Amendments adopted after the Civil War gave our nation what Lincoln promised at Gettysburg: a new birth of freedom, restoring the Declaration’s “self-evident” truths about equality and liberty to their rightful place at the center of our constitutional order.  These Amendments ended slavery, established birthright citizenship, expanded the franchise, and broadly protected civil and human rights.

For more:

•  Read CAC's brief in the Ninth Circuit case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, in support of the Fourteenth Amendment right of gay men and lesbians to marriage equality. In our brief, we ask the Court of Appeals to uphold the ruling of the District Court that California’s Proposition 8, which prohibits same-sex couples from marrying, violates those rights.
• Read CAC's issue brief, Born Under the Constitution: Why Recent Attacks on Birthright Citizenship are Unfounded. As we explain in the issue brief, a close study of the text and history of the Citizenship Clause demonstrates that birthright citizenship is guaranteed to every person born on U.S. soil and subject to its jurisdiction, regardless of the immigration status of the child's parents.

National Authority - The Constitution grants our federal government broad powers to address national problems by regulating commerce, taxing and spending for the general welfare, and implementing and enforcing many of the Constitution’s most important Amendments.  Congress has employed these powers at critical moments in our nation’s history, for example, by establishing a national bank in the Framing Era, stopping monopolies and protecting workers in the Progressive Era, propelling our country out of the Great Depression, and enacting civil rights laws in the 1960s. 

For more:

• Read CAC's brief, filed in the Fourth Circuit in the health care reform law case, Virginia ex rel. Cuccinelli v. Sebelius, in support of the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Our brief demonstrates that Congress's power to enact the Act's minimum coverage provision is supported by the original meaning of the Constitution's Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. Read our statement on our filing of the brief here.
• Read CAC's issue brief, Setting the Record Straight: The Tea Party and the Constitutional Powers of the Federal Government.

Federalism- The Constitution creates a federalist system that empowers state and local governments to serve as the laboratories of our democracy.  States in recent years have led the nation in addressing urgent needs for access to health care, economic security, equal opportunity, and environmental protection. While federal law can displace state and local action when Congress believes national uniformity is necessary, state and local laws that do not clearly conflict with federal law or constitutional mandates should be upheld by the courts if challenged. 

For more:

• Read the book by CAC's president and founder, Doug Kendall, Redefining Federalism, which has as its objective to reestablish federalism as a neutral principle, a lens for understanding the appropriate distribution of decisionmaking authority between the levels of government. 
• Read Doug Kendall's piece on Huffington Post, "Taking the Tenth Amendment Seriously." As Kendall explains, the Constitution's text and history demonstrates that "when the states ratified the Constitution, they renounced their status as fully-independent sovereigns and endowed the federal government with enumerated but substantial powers."