Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Illinois

Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Illinois PDF Author: Illinois. Constitutional Convention
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional conventions
Languages : en
Pages : 1092

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Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Illinois

Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Illinois PDF Author: Illinois. Constitutional Convention
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional conventions
Languages : en
Pages : 1092

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Book Description


Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Illinois

Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Illinois PDF Author: Illinois
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional history
Languages : en
Pages : 956

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The American State Constitutional Tradition

The American State Constitutional Tradition PDF Author: John J. Dinan
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700616896
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
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.

Republic of the Dispossessed

Republic of the Dispossessed PDF Author: Rowland Berthoff
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 9780826211019
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Berthoff (history, Washington U., St. Louis) argues that modern American society is distinctive from contemporary European thought by virtue of its middle class. Over the course of ten essays, the author develops the idea of an American middle-class who brought with them from Europe a set of social values that has acted as a template for middle-class values. These ideals of a balance between personal liberty and communal equality have inspired a peculiarly American reaction to the modern changes of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration, causing a reactive apprehension in the middle-class that they are, like their peasant and artisan ancestors, once again being dispossessed. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution

Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution PDF Author: Jonathan Elliot
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional history
Languages : en
Pages : 680

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Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention, State of Virginia

Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention, State of Virginia PDF Author: Virginia. Constitutional Convention
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional conventions
Languages : en
Pages : 1720

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In Her Own Name

In Her Own Name PDF Author: Sara Chatfield
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231553234
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
Co-Winner, 2024 V.O. Key Award, Southern Political Science Association Long before American women had the right to vote, states dramatically transformed their status as economic citizens. In the early nineteenth century, a married woman had hardly any legal existence apart from her husband. By the twentieth, state-level statutes, constitutional provisions, and court rulings had granted married women a host of protections relating to ownership and control of property. Why did powerful men extend these rights during a period when women had so little political sway? In Her Own Name explores the origins and consequences of laws guaranteeing married women’s property rights, focusing on the people and institutions that shaped them. Sara Chatfield demonstrates that the motives of male elites included personal interests, benefits to the larger economy, and bolstering state power. She shows that married women’s property rights could serve varied political goals across regions and eras, from temperance to debt relief to settlement of the West. State legislatures, constitutional conventions, and courts expanded these rights incrementally, and laws spread across the country without national-level coordination. Chatfield emphasizes that the reform of married women’s economic rights rested on exclusionary foundations, including protecting slavery and encouraging settler colonialism. Although some women benefited from property reforms, many others saw their rights stripped away by the same processes. Drawing on a mix of qualitative and quantitative evidence, In Her Own Name sheds new light on the place of women in the fitful democratization of the United States.

Looking for Rights in All the Wrong Places

Looking for Rights in All the Wrong Places PDF Author: Emily Zackin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400846277
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
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.

The Death Penalty

The Death Penalty PDF Author: Stuart Banner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674252225
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
The death penalty arouses our passions as does few other issues. Some view taking another person’s life as just and reasonable punishment while others see it as an inhumane and barbaric act. But the intensity of feeling that capital punishment provokes often obscures its long and varied history in this country. Now, for the first time, we have a comprehensive history of the death penalty in the United States. Law professor Stuart Banner tells the story of how, over four centuries, dramatic changes have taken place in the ways capital punishment has been administered and experienced. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the penalty was standard for a laundry list of crimes—from adultery to murder, from arson to stealing horses. Hangings were public events, staged before audiences numbering in the thousands, attended by women and men, young and old, black and white alike. Early on, the gruesome spectacle had explicitly religious purposes—an event replete with sermons, confessions, and last-minute penitence—to promote the salvation of both the condemned and the crowd. Through the nineteenth century, the execution became desacralized, increasingly secular and private, in response to changing mores. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, ironically, as it has become a quiet, sanitary, technological procedure, the death penalty is as divisive as ever. By recreating what it was like to be the condemned, the executioner, and the spectator, Banner moves beyond the debates, to give us an unprecedented understanding of capital punishment’s many meanings. As nearly four thousand inmates are now on death row, and almost one hundred are currently being executed each year, the furious debate is unlikely to diminish. The Death Penalty is invaluable in understanding the American way of the ultimate punishment.

The Right to Vote

The Right to Vote PDF Author: Alexander Keyssar
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465010148
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
Originally published in 2000, The Right to Vote was widely hailed as a magisterial account of the evolution of suffrage from the American Revolution to the end of the twentieth century. In this revised and updated edition, Keyssar carries the story forward, from the disputed presidential contest of 2000 through the 2008 campaign and the election of Barack Obama. The Right to Vote is a sweeping reinterpretation of American political history as well as a meditation on the meaning of democracy in contemporary American life.