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Author: Michael Les Benedict
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780823292431
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
"Americans' ideas about constitutional liberty played a crucial role in the history of Reconstruction. They provided the basis for the Republican program of equal rights; ironically, they also set the limits to that program and reduced the prospects for its success. Americans were as concerned with preserving the Constitution as they were with changing it to protect liberty and equal rights. These two commitments were in profound tension. The question was how one could change the constitutional system to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence--to entrench a republic dedicated to liberty instead of slavery--and yet preserve the essentials of federalism and local democracy. Almost 150 years later we still struggle with these problems." --Michael Les Benedict, from the Introduction Historians and legal scholars continue to confront the failure of Reconstruction, exploring the interaction of pervasive racism with widespread commitments to freedom and equality. In this important book, one of America's leading historians confronts the constitutional politics of the period from the end of the Civil War until 1877. Benedict updates ten of his classic essays that explore the way Republicans tried to replace the slaveholding republic with a nation dedicated to freedom and equality of basic legal and political rights--and how Americans' constitutional commitments, and those of Republicans themselves, limited reform. Expertly bridging legal, political, party history, the essays explore the fate of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, as well as the struggle between President and Congress over the course of Reconstruction. Brought together for the first time with a new introduction, and revised to reflect emerging scholarship, the essays are essential points of departure for students and scholars in history, law, and political science.
Author: Michael Les Benedict
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780823292431
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 316
Get Book Here
Book Description
"Americans' ideas about constitutional liberty played a crucial role in the history of Reconstruction. They provided the basis for the Republican program of equal rights; ironically, they also set the limits to that program and reduced the prospects for its success. Americans were as concerned with preserving the Constitution as they were with changing it to protect liberty and equal rights. These two commitments were in profound tension. The question was how one could change the constitutional system to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence--to entrench a republic dedicated to liberty instead of slavery--and yet preserve the essentials of federalism and local democracy. Almost 150 years later we still struggle with these problems." --Michael Les Benedict, from the Introduction Historians and legal scholars continue to confront the failure of Reconstruction, exploring the interaction of pervasive racism with widespread commitments to freedom and equality. In this important book, one of America's leading historians confronts the constitutional politics of the period from the end of the Civil War until 1877. Benedict updates ten of his classic essays that explore the way Republicans tried to replace the slaveholding republic with a nation dedicated to freedom and equality of basic legal and political rights--and how Americans' constitutional commitments, and those of Republicans themselves, limited reform. Expertly bridging legal, political, party history, the essays explore the fate of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, as well as the struggle between President and Congress over the course of Reconstruction. Brought together for the first time with a new introduction, and revised to reflect emerging scholarship, the essays are essential points of departure for students and scholars in history, law, and political science.
Author: Austin Sarat
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 0762314869
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Aims to bring together the work of leading scholars of Constitutionalism, Constitutional law, and politics in the United States to take stock of the field to chart its progress, and point the way for its future development.
Author: Ken I. Kersch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521193109
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 431
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Book Description
Recovers a contested, evolving tradition of conservative constitutional argument that shaped the past and is bidding to make the future.
Author: Geoffrey R. Stone
Publisher:
ISBN: 019093820X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Brown v. Board of Education (1954) -- Mapp v. Ohio (1961) -- Engel v. Vitale (1962) -- Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) -- New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) -- Reynolds v. Sims (1964) -- Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) -- Miranda v. Arizona (1966) -- Loving v. Virginia (1967) -- Katz v. United States (1967) -- Shapiro v. Thompson (1968) -- Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969).
Author: Joseph Story
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional history
Languages : en
Pages : 800
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Book Description
Author: Mark Tushnet
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822971
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 255
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Book Description
Here a leading scholar in constitutional law, Mark Tushnet, challenges hallowed American traditions of judicial review and judicial supremacy, which allow U.S. judges to invalidate "unconstitutional" governmental actions. Many people, particularly liberals, have "warm and fuzzy" feelings about judicial review. They are nervous about what might happen to unprotected constitutional provisions in the chaotic worlds of practical politics and everyday life. By examining a wide range of situations involving constitutional rights, Tushnet vigorously encourages us all to take responsibility for protecting our liberties. Guarding them is not the preserve of judges, he maintains, but a commitment of the citizenry to define itself as "We the People of the United States." The Constitution belongs to us collectively, as we act in political dialogue with each other--whether in the street, in the voting booth, or in the legislature as representatives of others. Tushnet urges that we create a "populist" constitutional law in which judicial declarations deserve no special consideration. But he warns that in so doing we must pursue reasonable interpretations of the "thin Constitution"--the fundamental American principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution. A populist Constitution, he maintains, will be more effective than a document exclusively protected by the courts. Tushnet believes, for example, that the serious problems of the communist scare of the 1950s were aggravated when Senator Joseph McCarthy's opponents were lulled into inaction, believing that the judicial branch would step in and declare McCarthy's actions unconstitutional. Instead of fulfilling the expectations, the Court allowed McCarthy to continue his crusade until it was ended. Tushnet points out that in this context and in many others, errors occurred because of the existence of judicial review: neither the People nor their representatives felt empowered to enforce the Constitution because they mistakenly counted on the courts to do so. Tushnet's clarion call for a new kind of constitutional law will be essential reading for constitutional law experts, political scientists, and others interested in how and if the freedoms of the American Republic can survive into the twenty-first century.
Author: Joseph Fishkin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067498062X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 641
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Book Description
A bold call to reclaim an American tradition that argues the Constitution imposes a duty on government to fight oligarchy and ensure broadly shared wealth. Oligarchy is a threat to the American republic. When too much economic and political power is concentrated in too few hands, we risk losing the Òrepublican form of governmentÓ the Constitution requires. Today, courts enforce the Constitution as if it has almost nothing to say about this threat. But as Joseph Fishkin and William Forbath show in this revolutionary retelling of constitutional history, a commitment to prevent oligarchy once stood at the center of a robust tradition in American political and constitutional thought. Fishkin and Forbath demonstrate that reformers, legislators, and even judges working in this Òdemocracy of opportunityÓ tradition understood that the Constitution imposes a duty on legislatures to thwart oligarchy and promote a broad distribution of wealth and political power. These ideas led Jacksonians to fight special economic privileges for the few, Populists to try to break up monopoly power, and Progressives to fight for the constitutional right to form a union. During Reconstruction, Radical Republicans argued in this tradition that racial equality required breaking up the oligarchy of slave power and distributing wealth and opportunity to former slaves and their descendants. President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Dealers built their politics around this tradition, winning the fight against the Òeconomic royalistsÓ and Òindustrial despots.Ó But today, as we enter a new Gilded Age, this tradition in progressive American economic and political thought lies dormant. The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution begins the work of recovering it and exploring its profound implications for our deeply unequal society and badly damaged democracy.
Author: Theodore J. Lowi
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806128870
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
In The End of the Republican Era, Theodore J. Lowi predicts not only a collapse of the Republican coalition but also the potential collapse of the United States’ republican experiment at large. Professing that the ideologies of dominant political coalitions contain the seeds of their own destruction, Lowi suggests that the efforts of a new conservative Right to enforce a national, religion-based morality has brought about the demise of the Republican era. A new, in-depth afterword by Lowi brings the text up to date with a discussion of political events since the book’s original publication. Noting the appearance of the new Conservative coalition, whose ideology runs counter to that of the traditional Republican party, Lowi affirms that the Republican era did in fact come to an end during the 1990s, having morphed into a Conservative party.
Author: Adam Cohen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735221529
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 458
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Book Description
“With Supreme Inequality, Adam Cohen has built, brick by brick, an airtight case against the Supreme Court of the last half-century...Cohen’s book is a closing statement in the case against an institution tasked with protecting the vulnerable, which has emboldened the rich and powerful instead.” —Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor, Slate A revelatory examination of the conservative direction of the Supreme Court over the last fifty years. In Supreme Inequality, bestselling author Adam Cohen surveys the most significant Supreme Court rulings since the Nixon era and exposes how, contrary to what Americans like to believe, the Supreme Court does little to protect the rights of the poor and disadvantaged; in fact, it has not been on their side for fifty years. Cohen proves beyond doubt that the modern Court has been one of the leading forces behind the nation’s soaring level of economic inequality, and that an institution revered as a source of fairness has been systematically making America less fair. A triumph of American legal, political, and social history, Supreme Inequality holds to account the highest court in the land and shows how much damage it has done to America’s ideals of equality, democracy, and justice for all.
Author: J. M. Balkin
Publisher:
ISBN: 0197530990
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
The Cycles of Constitutional Time shows where American democracy has been and projects where it is going. Jack Balkin explains why our politics seems so dysfunctional and why fights over the courts seem so bitter and unhinged. He portrays our present troubles in terms of longer, constitutional trends. In doing so, he also offers a message of hope for the future. The same trends that put us in this predicament are slowly changing. Our political system can get better if Americans mobilize to change it.
