The Dangerous Groundswell for Black Reparations

Recent months have witnessed well organized efforts to institute multiple reparation programs to undo wrongs done to Black Americans over the tangled course of this nation's history. These claims fail on both legal and moral grounds.

Let's start with the legal. Reparations cannot be cured by simple legislation. Awarding them requires lawsuits brought against the proper defendants, who have a raft of substantive defenses. Thus, a suit against United States for the harms of slavery runs into the decisive objection that the antebellum federal government had limited powers, which did...