Norton's Losing Liberty Judicially now online
http://constitution.org/norton/llj.htm

One of the few voices for constitutionalism during the early and middle 
20th century was Thomas James Norton, a lawyer who mainly practiced in 
the Chicago area. While it was fashionable to make major departures from 
original understanding, he held firm for strict construction and the 
rule of law.

He wrote a number of books. His first major work was /The Constitution 
of the United States: Its Sources and its Application/. The work for 
which he may be best known was /Undermining the Constitution/, published 
in 1950, online at http://constitution.org/norton/norton_.htm . But 
we have now rendered one of his earlier works, /Losing Liberty 
Judicially/, written in 1928, http://constitution.org/norton/llj.htm 
. Written during the height of Prohibition, it examines the 
constitutional issues involved, such as his position that the power to 
regulate did not imply the power to prohibit, or to impose criminal 
penalties, and his critique of the case of Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 
623 (1887), which sustained a state prohibition of alcohol, but also 
defined state police powers in a way that Norton found constitutionally 
objectionable. He traces a line of Supreme Court precedents that drifted 
away from original understanding, and attacked the practice of stare 
decisis that treats recent precedents as more authoritative than 
original text. His arguments are still relevant today, adapted to the 
"war on drugs".

This book captures a moment in constitutional history on the eve of the 
Depression, the New Deal, and the "Switch in Time that Saved Nine". 
Through Norton's analysis we can see that the groundwork for the "New 
Deal Revolution" was actually laid years before. For legal historians it 
provides insight into how constitutional thought was evolving during 
that critical period, and how few were the voices for fidelity to the 
Founders.