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Author: William Davenport Mercer
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806158654
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 359
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Book Description
The modern effort to locate American liberties, it turns out, began in the mud at the bottom of Baltimore harbor. John Barron Jr. and John Craig sued the city for damages after Baltimore’s rebuilt drainage system diverted water and sediment into the harbor, preventing large ships from tying up at Barron and Craig’s wharf. By the time the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1833, the issue had become whether the city’s actions constituted a taking of property by the state without just compensation, a violation of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The high court’s decision in Barron v. Baltimore marked a critical step in the rapid evolution of law and constitutional rights during the first half of the nineteenth century. Diminishing the Bill of Rights examines the backstory and context of this decision as a turning point in the development of our current conception of individual rights. Since the colonial period, Americans had viewed their rights as springing from multiple sources, including the common law, natural right, and English legal tradition. Despite this rich heritage and a prohibition grounded in the Magna Carta against uncompensated state takings of property, the Court ruled against Barron’s claim. The Bill of Rights, Chief Justice John Marshall declared in his opinion for the majority, restrained only the federal government, not the states. The Fifth Amendment, accordingly, did not apply to Maryland or any of the cities it chartered. In explaining how the Court came to reject a multisourced view of human liberties—a position seemingly inconsistent with its previous decisions—William Davenport Mercer helps explain why we now envision the Constitution as essential to guaranteeing our rights. Marshall’s view of rights in Barron, Mercer argues, helped him navigate the Court through the precarious political currents of the time. While the chief justice may have effected a shrewd political maneuver, the decision helped hasten a reconceptualization of rights as located in documents. Its legacy, as Mercer’s work makes clear, is among the Jacksonian era’s significant democratic reforms and marks the emergence of a distinctly American constitutionalism.
Author: William Davenport Mercer
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806158654
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 359
Get Book Here
Book Description
The modern effort to locate American liberties, it turns out, began in the mud at the bottom of Baltimore harbor. John Barron Jr. and John Craig sued the city for damages after Baltimore’s rebuilt drainage system diverted water and sediment into the harbor, preventing large ships from tying up at Barron and Craig’s wharf. By the time the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1833, the issue had become whether the city’s actions constituted a taking of property by the state without just compensation, a violation of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The high court’s decision in Barron v. Baltimore marked a critical step in the rapid evolution of law and constitutional rights during the first half of the nineteenth century. Diminishing the Bill of Rights examines the backstory and context of this decision as a turning point in the development of our current conception of individual rights. Since the colonial period, Americans had viewed their rights as springing from multiple sources, including the common law, natural right, and English legal tradition. Despite this rich heritage and a prohibition grounded in the Magna Carta against uncompensated state takings of property, the Court ruled against Barron’s claim. The Bill of Rights, Chief Justice John Marshall declared in his opinion for the majority, restrained only the federal government, not the states. The Fifth Amendment, accordingly, did not apply to Maryland or any of the cities it chartered. In explaining how the Court came to reject a multisourced view of human liberties—a position seemingly inconsistent with its previous decisions—William Davenport Mercer helps explain why we now envision the Constitution as essential to guaranteeing our rights. Marshall’s view of rights in Barron, Mercer argues, helped him navigate the Court through the precarious political currents of the time. While the chief justice may have effected a shrewd political maneuver, the decision helped hasten a reconceptualization of rights as located in documents. Its legacy, as Mercer’s work makes clear, is among the Jacksonian era’s significant democratic reforms and marks the emergence of a distinctly American constitutionalism.
Author: David J. Bodenhamer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019991303X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
The framers of the Constitution chose their words carefully when they wrote of a more perfect union--not absolutely perfect, but with room for improvement. Indeed, we no longer operate under the same Constitution as that ratified in 1788, or even the one completed by the Bill of Rights in 1791--because we are no longer the same nation. In The Revolutionary Constitution, David J. Bodenhamer provides a comprehensive new look at America's basic law, integrating the latest legal scholarship with historical context to highlight how it has evolved over time. The Constitution, he notes, was the product of the first modern revolution, and revolutions are, by definition, moments when the past shifts toward an unfamiliar future, one radically different from what was foreseen only a brief time earlier. In seeking to balance power and liberty, the framers established a structure that would allow future generations to continually readjust the scale. Bodenhamer explores this dynamic through seven major constitutional themes: federalism, balance of powers, property, representation, equality, rights, and security. With each, he takes a historical approach, following their changes over time. For example, the framers wrote multiple protections for property rights into the Constitution in response to actions by state governments after the Revolution. But twentieth-century courts--and Congress--redefined property rights through measures such as zoning and the designation of historical landmarks (diminishing their commercial value) in response to the needs of a modern economy. The framers anticipated just such a future reworking of their own compromises between liberty and power. With up-to-the-minute legal expertise and a broad grasp of the social and political context, this book is a tour de force of Constitutional history and analysis.
Author: Susan Ford Wiltshire
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806124643
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Book Description
The principle that a purpose of government is to protect the individual rights and minority opinions of its citizens is a recent idea in human history. A doctrine of human rights could never have evolved, however, if the ancient Athenians had not invented the revolutionary idea that human beings are capable of governing themselves and if the ancient Romans had not created their elaborate system of law. Susan Ford Wiltshire traces the evolution of the doctrine of individual rights from antiquity through the eighteenth century. The common thread through that long story is the theory of natural law. Growing out of Greek political thought, especially that of Aristotle, natural law became a major tenet of Stoic philosophy during the Hellenistic age and later became attached to Roman legal doctrine. It underwent several transformations during the Middle Ages on the Continent and in England, especially in the thought of John Locke, before it came to justify a theory of natural rights, claimed by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence as the basis of the "unalienable rights" of Americans. Amendment by amendment, Wiltshire assesses in detail the ancient parallels for the twenty-odd provisions of the Bill of Rights. She does not claim that it is directly influenced by Greek and Roman political practice. Rather, she examines classical efforts toward assuring such guarantees as freedom of speech, religious toleration, and trial by jury. Present in the ancient world, too, were early experiments in limiting search and seizure, the billeting of soldiers, and the right to bear arms. Wiltshire concludes that while the idea of individual rights evolved later than classical antiquity, the civic infrastructure supporting such rights in the United States is preeminently a legacy from ancient Greece and Rome. In the era celebrating the Bicentennial of the Bill of Rights, Greece, Rome, and the Bill of Rights reminds us once again that the idea of ensuring human rights has a long history, one as tenuous but as enduring as the story of human freedom itself.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789213622513
Category : Civil rights
Languages : en
Pages : 144
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Book Description
This publication is designed to assist United Nations staff who provide human rights advice to States, which undertake to amend an existing constitution or write a new one. It should also be of use to States that undertake constitutional reform, including political leaders, policymakers, legislators and those entrusted to draft constitutional amendments or a new constitution. Further this publication should also facilitate advocacy efforts by civil society to ensure that human rights are properly reflected in constitutional amendments or new constitutions. Finally, this publication, along with the international human rights instruments, should not only provide a standard to measure whether constitutional amendments or a new constitution has appropriately reflected human rights and fundamental freedoms, but also assist in evaluating whether the processes used in constitutional reform are consistent with international procedural norms"--Introduction, page 1.
Author: Stephen Gardbaum
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107009286
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
Stephen Gardbaum proposes and examines a new way of protecting rights in a democracy.
Author: Meghan J. Ryan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108498574
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 339
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Book Description
A theoretical and practical exploration of the constitutional bar against cruel and unusual punishments, excessive bail, and excessive fines.
Author: Thomas Paine
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 88
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Book Description
Author: Richard Thompson Ford
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429969253
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 283
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Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 Since the 1960s, ideas developed during the civil rights movement have been astonishingly successful in fighting overt discrimination and prejudice. But how successful are they at combating the whole spectrum of social injustice-including conditions that aren't directly caused by bigotry? How do they stand up to segregation, for instance-a legacy of racism, but not the direct result of ongoing discrimination? It's tempting to believe that civil rights litigation can combat these social ills as efficiently as it has fought blatant discrimination. In Rights Gone Wrong, Richard Thompson Ford, author of the New York Times Notable Book The Race Card, argues that this is seldom the case. Civil rights do too much and not enough: opportunists use them to get a competitive edge in schools and job markets, while special-interest groups use them to demand special privileges. Extremists on both the left and the right have hijacked civil rights for personal advantage. Worst of all, their theatrics have drawn attention away from more serious social injustices. Ford, a professor of law at Stanford University, shows us the many ways in which civil rights can go terribly wrong. He examines newsworthy lawsuits with shrewdness and humor, proving that the distinction between civil rights and personal entitlements is often anything but clear. Finally, he reveals how many of today's social injustices actually can't be remedied by civil rights law, and demands more creative and nuanced solutions. In order to live up to the legacy of the civil rights movement, we must renew our commitment to civil rights, and move beyond them.
Author: James Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 786
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Book Description
Collected writings of James Wilson, one of six men to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Author: Jeffrey Goldsworthy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351151223
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
Australia is now the only major Anglophone country that has not adopted a Bill of Rights. Since 1982 Canada, New Zealand and the UK have all adopted either constitutional or statutory bills of rights. Australia, however, continues to rely on common law, statutes dealing with specific issues such as racial and sexual discrimination, a generally tolerant society and a vibrant democracy. This book focuses on the protection of human rights in Australia and includes international perspectives for the purpose of comparison and it provides an examination of how well Australian institutions, governments, legislatures, courts and tribunals have performed in protecting human rights in the absence of a Bill of Rights.
