Author: Cf Strong
Publisher: Legare Street Press
ISBN: 9781019416488
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Provides a thorough and insightful analysis of the development of constitutionalism and democracy in the modern world. Through a comparison of different national systems, the author identifies the key features and challenges of constitutional design, and argues for a renewed commitment to democratic values and institutions. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Author: Simon J. Gilhooley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108853412
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285
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Book Description
This book argues that conflicts over slavery and abolition in the early American Republic generated a mode of constitutional interpretation that remains powerful today: the belief that the historical spirit of founding holds authority over the current moment. Simon J. Gilhooley traces how debates around the existence of slavery in the District of Columbia gave rise to the articulation of this constitutional interpretation, which constrained the radical potential of the constitutional text. To reconstruct the origins of this interpretation, Gilhooley draws on rich sources that include historical newspapers, pamphlets, and congressional debates. Examining free black activism in the North, Abolitionism in the 1830s, and the evolution of pro-slavery thought, this book shows how in navigating the existence of slavery in the District and the fundamental constitutional issue of the enslaved's personhood, Antebellum opponents of abolition came to promote an enduring but constraining constitutional imaginary.
Author: Rogers M. Smith
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812252349
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
More than two millennia ago, Aristotle is said to have compiled a collection of ancient constitutions that informed his studies of politics. For Aristotle, constitutions largely distilled and described the varied and distinctive patterns of political life established over time. What constitutionalism has come to mean in the modern era, on the other hand, originates chiefly in the late eighteenth century and primarily with the U.S. Constitution—written in 1787 and made effective in 1789—and the various French constitutions that first appeared in 1791. In the last half century, more than 130 nations have adopted new constitutions, half of those within the last twenty years. These new constitutions are devoted to many of the same goals found in the U.S. Constitution: the rule of law, representative self-government, and protection of rights. But by canvassing constitutional developments at the national and state level in the United States alongside modern constitutions in Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, and Asia, the contributors to Modern Constitutions—all leading scholars of constitutionalism—show that modern constitutions often seek to protect social rights and to establish representative institutions, forms of federalism, and courts charged with constitutional review that depart from or go far beyond the seminal U.S. example. Partly because of their innovations, however, many modern constitutional systems now confront mounting authoritarian pressures that put fundamental commitments to the rule of law in jeopardy. The contributions in this volume collectively provide a measure of guidance for the challenges and prospects of modern constitutions in the rapidly changing political world of the twenty-first century. Contributors: Richard R. Beeman, Valerie Bunce, Tom Ginsburg, Heinz Klug, David S. Law, Sanford Levinson, Jaime Lluch, Christopher McCrudden, Kim Lane Scheppele, Rogers M. Smith, Mila Versteeg, Emily Zackin.
Author: Jack N. Rakove
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307434516
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 465
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Book Description
From abortion to same-sex marriage, today's most urgent political debates will hinge on this two-part question: What did the United States Constitution originally mean and who now understands its meaning best? Rakove chronicles the Constitution from inception to ratification and, in doing so, traces its complex weave of ideology and interest, showing how this document has meant different things at different times to different groups of Americans.
Author: Charles Howard McIlwain
Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
ISBN: 1584775505
Category : Constitutional history
Languages : en
Pages : 172
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Book Description
Examines of the rise of constitutionalism from the "democratic strands" in the works of Aristotle and Cicero through the transitional moment between the medieval and the modern eras.
Author: Woody Holton
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1429923660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
Average Americans Were the True Framers of the Constitution Woody Holton upends what we think we know of the Constitution's origins by telling the history of the average Americans who challenged the framers of the Constitution and forced on them the revisions that produced the document we now venerate. The framers who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 were determined to reverse America's post–Revolutionary War slide into democracy. They believed too many middling Americans exercised too much influence over state and national policies. That the framers were only partially successful in curtailing citizen rights is due to the reaction, sometimes violent, of unruly average Americans. If not to protect civil liberties and the freedom of the people, what motivated the framers? In Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, Holton provides the startling discovery that the primary purpose of the Constitution was, simply put, to make America more attractive to investment. And the linchpin to that endeavor was taking power away from the states and ultimately away from the people. In an eye-opening interpretation of the Constitution, Holton captures how the same class of Americans that produced Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts (and rebellions in damn near every other state) produced the Constitution we now revere. Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution is a 2007 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.
Author: William G. Howell
Publisher:
ISBN: 0465042694
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
"Our government is failing us. Can we simply blame polarization, the deregulation of campaign finance, or some other nefarious force? What if the roots go much deeper, to our nation's start? In Relic, the political scientists William Howell and Terry Moe boldly argue that nothing less than the U.S. Constitution is the cause of government dysfunction. The framers came from a simple, small, agrarian society, and set forth a government comprised of separate powers, one of which, Congress, was expected to respond to the parochial concerns of citizens across the land. By design, the national government they created was incapable of taking broad and meaningful action. But a hundred years after the nation's founding, the United States was transformed into a complex, large, and industrial society. The key, they argue, is to expand the powers of the president. Presidents take a longer view of things out of concern for their legacies, and are able to act without hesitation. To back up this controversial remedy, Howell and Moe offer an incisive understanding of the Progressive Movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one of the most powerful movements in American history. The Progressives shone a bright light on the mismatch between our constitutional government and the demands of modernity, and they succeeded in changing our government, sidelining Congress and installing a presidentially-led system that was more able to tackle the nation's vast social problems. Howell and Moe argue that we need a second Progressive Movement dedicated to effective government, above all to reforms that promote strong presidential leadership. For it is through the presidency that the American government can address the problems that threaten the very stability of our society"--
Author: John F. Kowal
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620975629
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 493
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Book Description
The 233-year story of how the American people have taken an imperfect constitution—the product of compromises and an artifact of its time—and made it more democratic Who wrote the Constitution? That’s obvious, we think: fifty-five men in Philadelphia in 1787. But much of the Constitution was actually written later, in a series of twenty-seven amendments enacted over the course of two centuries. The real history of the Constitution is the astonishing story of how subsequent generations have reshaped our founding document amid some of the most colorful, contested, and controversial battles in American political life. It’s a story of how We the People have improved our government’s structure and expanded the scope of our democracy during eras of transformational social change. The People’s Constitution is an elegant, sobering, and masterly account of the evolution of American democracy. From the addition of the Bill of Rights, a promise made to save the Constitution from near certain defeat, to the post–Civil War battle over the Fourteenth Amendment, from the rise and fall of the “noble experiment” of Prohibition to the defeat and resurgence of an Equal Rights Amendment a century in the making, The People’s Constitution is the first book of its kind: a vital guide to America’s national charter, and an alternative history of the continuing struggle to realize the Framers’ promise of a more perfect union.
Author: Linda Colley
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1324092386
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A work of extraordinary range and striking originality, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen traces the global history of written constitutions from the 1750s to the twentieth century, modifying accepted narratives and uncovering the close connections between the making of constitutions and the making of war. In the process, Linda Colley both reappraises famous constitutions and recovers those that have been marginalized but were central to the rise of a modern world. She brings to the fore neglected sites, such as Corsica, with its pioneering constitution of 1755, and tiny Pitcairn Island in the Pacific, the first place on the globe permanently to enfranchise women. She highlights the role of unexpected players, such as Catherine the Great of Russia, who was experimenting with constitutional techniques with her enlightened Nakaz decades before the Founding Fathers framed the American constitution. Written constitutions are usually examined in relation to individual states, but Colley focuses on how they crossed boundaries, spreading into six continents by 1918 and aiding the rise of empires as well as nations. She also illumines their place not simply in law and politics but also in wider cultural histories, and their intimate connections with print, literary creativity, and the rise of the novel. Colley shows how—while advancing epic revolutions and enfranchising white males—constitutions frequently served over the long nineteenth century to marginalize indigenous people, exclude women and people of color, and expropriate land. Simultaneously, though, she investigates how these devices were adapted by peoples and activists outside the West seeking to resist European and American power. She describes how Tunisia generated the first modern Islamic constitution in 1861, quickly suppressed, but an influence still on the Arab Spring; how Africanus Horton of Sierra Leone—inspired by the American Civil War—devised plans for self-governing nations in West Africa; and how Japan’s Meiji constitution of 1889 came to compete with Western constitutionalism as a model for Indian, Chinese, and Ottoman nationalists and reformers. Vividly written and handsomely illustrated, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen is an absorbing work that—with its pageant of formative wars, powerful leaders, visionary lawmakers and committed rebels—retells the story of constitutional government and the evolution of ideas of what it means to be modern.
Author: Håkon Evju
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004394060
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331
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Book Description
What was the role of historical thought and historical inquiry in debates over reform during the Enlightenment? In Ancient Constitutions and Modern Monarchy, Håkon Evju addresses this issue by considering the case of eighteenth-century Denmark-Norway. He argues that historians contributed crucially to the rethinking of Dano-Norwegian absolutism in the face of a shift towards commercial society. Their vision of an ancient Nordic constitution helped recast the monarchy as moderate and influenced debates over agricultural improvements in Denmark and Norway. In an innovative comparative analysis, Evju demonstrates how notions of a common political past were used differently in the two kingdoms. Yet in both cases, such appeals to tradition were vital in controversies over monarchical reform politics during the Enlightenment.
