| Author | : John J. Dinan |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 448 |
| Release | : 2006 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : |
The first comprehensive study of all 114 state constitutional conventions for which there are records--from Connecticut's in 1818 to New Hampshire's in 1984. By integrating state constitution-makers with the federal constitutional tradition, this path-breaking work yields a superior understanding of how American citizens have chosen to govern themselves.
| Author | : H. Lowell Brown |
| Publisher | : Rowman & Littlefield |
| Total Pages | : 253 |
| Release | : 2017-05-24 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1683930487 |
The book is a work of non-fiction. The book is a historical analysis of the evolution of a uniquely American constitutionalism that began with the original English royal charters for the exploration and exploitation of North America. When the U.S. Constitution was written in 1787, the accepted conception of a constitution was that of the British constitution, upon which the colonists had relied in asserting their rights with respect to the imperium, comprised of ancient documents, parliamentary enactments, administrative regulations, judicial pronouncements, and established custom. Of equal significance, the laws comprising the constitution did not differ from other statutes and as a consequence, there was no law endowed with greater sanctity than other legislative enactments. In framing the revolutionary state constitutions following the retreat of the crown governments in the colonies, as well as the later federal Constitution, the Revolutionaries fundamentally reconceived a constitution as being the single authoritative source of fundamental law that was superior to all other statutes, regulations, and judicial decisions, that was ratified by the states and that was subject to revision only through a formal amendment process. This new constitutional conception has been hailed as the great innovation of the revolutionary period, and deservedly so. This American constitutionalism had its origins in the now largely overlooked royal charters for the exploration of North America beginning with the charter granted to Sir Humphrey Gilbert by Elizabeth I in 1578. The book follows the development of this constitutional tradition from the early charters of the Virginia Companies and the covenants entered of the New England colonies, through the proprietary charters of the Middle Atlantic colonies. On the basis of those foundational documents, the colonists fashioned governments that came to be comprised not only of an executive, but an elected legislature and a judiciary. In those foundational documents and in the acts of the colonial legislatures, the settlers sought to harmonize their aspirations for just institutions and individual rights with the exigencies and imperatives of an alien and often hostile environment. When the colonies faced the withdrawal of the crown governments in 1775, they drew on their experience, which they formalized in written constitutions. This uniquely American constitutional tradition of the charters, covenants and state constitutions was the foundation of the federal Constitution and of the process by which the Constitution was written and ratified a decade later.
| Author | : Emily Zackin |
| Publisher | : Princeton University Press |
| Total Pages | : 250 |
| Release | : 2013-04-21 |
| Genre | : Law |
| ISBN | : 069115578X |
Unlike many national constitutions, which contain explicit positive rights to such things as education, a living wage, and a healthful environment, the U.S. Bill of Rights appears to contain only a long list of prohibitions on government. American constitutional rights, we are often told, protect people only from an overbearing government, but give no explicit guarantees of governmental help. Looking for Rights in All the Wrong Places argues that we have fundamentally misunderstood the American rights tradition. The United States actually has a long history of enshrining positive rights in its constitutional law, but these rights have been overlooked simply because they are not in the federal Constitution. Emily Zackin shows how they instead have been included in America's state constitutions, in large part because state governments, not the federal government, have long been primarily responsible for crafting American social policy. Although state constitutions, seemingly mired in trivial detail, can look like pale imitations of their federal counterpart, they have been sites of serious debate, reflect national concerns, and enshrine choices about fundamental values. Zackin looks in depth at the history of education, labor, and environmental reform, explaining why America's activists targeted state constitutions in their struggles for government protection from the hazards of life under capitalism. Shedding much-needed light on the variety of reasons that activists pursued the creation of new state-level rights, Looking for Rights in All the Wrong Places challenges us to rethink our most basic assumptions about the American constitutional tradition.
| Author | : Justin Buckley Dyer |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : |
| Release | : 2012-02-13 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 1139505157 |
In Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition, Justin Buckley Dyer provides a succinct account of the development of American antislavery constitutionalism in the years preceding the Civil War. Within the context of recent revisionist scholarship, Dyer argues that the theoretical foundations of American constitutionalism - which he identifies with principles of natural law - were antagonistic to slavery. Still, the continued existence of slavery in the nineteenth century created a tension between practice and principle. In a series of case studies, Dyer reconstructs the constitutional arguments of prominent antislavery thinkers such as John Quincy Adams, John McLean, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, who collectively sought to overcome the legacy of slavery by emphasizing the natural law foundations of American constitutionalism. What emerges is a convoluted understanding of American constitutional development that challenges traditional narratives of linear progress while highlighting the centrality of natural law to America's greatest constitutional crisis.
| Author | : Christian G. Fritz |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 441 |
| Release | : 2007-10-29 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1139467174 |
American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War challenges traditional American constitutional history, theory and jurisprudence that sees today's constitutionalism as linked by an unbroken chain to the 1787 Federal constitutional convention. American Sovereigns examines the idea that after the American Revolution, a collectivity - the people - would rule as the sovereign. Heated political controversies within the states and at the national level over what it meant that the people were the sovereign and how that collective sovereign could express its will were not resolved in 1776, in 1787, or prior to the Civil War. The idea of the people as the sovereign both unified and divided Americans in thinking about government and the basis of the Union. Today's constitutionalism is not a natural inheritance, but the product of choices Americans made between shifting understandings about themselves as a collective sovereign.
| Author | : Leia Castañeda Anastacio |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 341 |
| Release | : 2016-08-22 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1107024676 |
This book examines how the colonial Philippine constitution weakened the safeguards that shielded liberty from power and unleashed a constitutional despotism.
| Author | : John J. Dinan |
| Publisher | : University Press of Kansas |
| Total Pages | : 447 |
| Release | : 2006-04-14 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 0700616896 |
For too long, the American constitutional tradition has been defined solely by the U.S. Constitution drafted in 1787. Yet constitutional debates at the state level open a window on how Americans, in different places and at different times, have chosen to govern themselves. From New Hampshire in 1776 to Louisiana in 1992, state constitutional conventions have served not only as instruments of democracy but also as forums for revising federal principles and institutions. In The American State Constitutional Tradition, John Dinan shows that state constitutions are much more than mere echoes of the federal document. The first comprehensive study of all 114 state constitutional conventions for which there are recorded debates, his book shows that state constitutional debates in many ways better reflect the accumulated wisdom of American constitution-makers than do the more traditional studies of the federal constitution. Wielding extraordinary command over a mass of historical detail, Dinan clarifies the alternatives considered by state constitution makers and the reasons for the adoption or rejection of various governing principles and institutions. Among other things, he shows that the states are nearly universal in their rejection of the rigid federal model of the constitutional amendment process, favoring more flexible procedures for constitutional change; they often grant citizens greater direct participation in law-making; they have debated and at times rejected the value of bicameralism; and they have altered the veto powers of both the executive and judicial branches. Dinan also shows that, while the Founders favored a minimalist design and focused exclusively on protecting individuals from government action, state constitution makers have often adopted more detailed constitutions, sometimes specifying positive rights that depend on government action for their enforcement. Moreover, unlike the federal constitution, state constitutions often contain provisions dedicated to the formation of citizen character, ranging from compulsory schooling to the regulation of gambling or liquor. By integrating state constitution making with the federal constitutional tradition, this path-breaking work widens and deepens our understanding of the principles by which we've chosen to govern ourselves.
| Author | : Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 288 |
| Release | : 2018-05-07 |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : 0190866063 |
When we think of constitutional law, we invariably think of the United States Supreme Court and the federal court system. Yet much of our constitutional law is not made at the federal level. In 51 Imperfect Solutions, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton argues that American Constitutional Law should account for the role of the state courts and state constitutions, together with the federal courts and the federal constitution, in protecting individual liberties. The book tells four stories that arise in four different areas of constitutional law: equal protection; criminal procedure; privacy; and free speech and free exercise of religion. Traditional accounts of these bedrock debates about the relationship of the individual to the state focus on decisions of the United States Supreme Court. But these explanations tell just part of the story. The book corrects this omission by looking at each issue-and some others as well-through the lens of many constitutions, not one constitution; of many courts, not one court; and of all American judges, not federal or state judges. Taken together, the stories reveal a remarkably complex, nuanced, ever-changing federalist system, one that ought to make lawyers and litigants pause before reflexively assuming that the United States Supreme Court alone has all of the answers to the most vexing constitutional questions. If there is a central conviction of the book, it's that an underappreciation of state constitutional law has hurt state and federal law and has undermined the appropriate balance between state and federal courts in protecting individual liberty. In trying to correct this imbalance, the book also offers several ideas for reform.
| Author | : Mark A. Graber |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 300 |
| Release | : 2006-07-03 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9781139457071 |
Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil , first published in 2006, concerns what is entailed by pledging allegiance to a constitutional text and tradition saturated with concessions to evil. The Constitution of the United States was originally understood as an effort to mediate controversies between persons who disputed fundamental values, and did not offer a vision of the good society. In order to form a 'more perfect union' with slaveholders, late-eighteenth-century citizens fashioned a constitution that plainly compelled some injustices and was silent or ambiguous on other questions of fundamental right. This constitutional relationship could survive only as long as a bisectional consensus was required to resolve all constitutional questions not settled in 1787. Dred Scott challenges persons committed to human freedom to determine whether antislavery northerners should have provided more accommodations for slavery than were constitutionally strictly necessary or risked the enormous destruction of life and property that preceded Lincoln's new birth of freedom.
