A Comparative Study of the State Constitution of the American Revolution

A Comparative Study of the State Constitution of the American Revolution PDF Author: William Clarence Webster
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutions, State
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description

A Comparative Study of the State Constitution of the American Revolution

A Comparative Study of the State Constitution of the American Revolution PDF Author: William Clarence Webster
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutions, State
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description


The Revolutionary Constitution

The Revolutionary Constitution PDF 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.

The U.S. Constitution

The U.S. Constitution PDF Author: David J. Bodenhamer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195378326
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
The U.S. Constitution: A Very Short Introduction explores the major themes of American constitutional history --federalism, the balance of powers, property, representation, equality, and security -- and illustrates how the Constitution has served as a dynamic framework for legitimating power and advancing liberty.

The American State Constitutional Tradition

The American State Constitutional Tradition PDF Author: John J. Dinan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
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.

American States of Nature

American States of Nature PDF Author: Mark Somos
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190909560
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 509

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Book Description
American States of Nature transforms our understanding of the American Revolution and the early makings of the Constitution. The journey to an independent United States generated important arguments about the existing condition of Americans, in which rival interpretations of the term "state of nature" played a crucial role. "State of nature" typically implied a pre-political condition and was often invoked in support of individual rights to property and self-defense and the right to exit or to form a political state. It could connote either a paradise, a baseline condition of virtue and health, or a hell on earth. This mutable phrase was well-known in Europe and its empires. In the British colonies, "state of nature" appeared thousands of times in juridical, theological, medical, political, economic, and other texts from 1630 to 1810. But by the 1760s, a distinctively American state-of-nature discourse started to emerge. It combined existing meanings and sidelined others in moments of intense contestation, such as the Stamp Act crisis of 1765-66 and the First Continental Congress of 1774. In laws, resolutions, petitions, sermons, broadsides, pamphlets, letters, and diaries, the American states of nature came to justify independence at least as much as colonial formulations of liberty, property, and individual rights did. In this groundbreaking book, Mark Somos focuses on the formative decade and a half just before the American Revolution. Somos' investigation begins with a 1761 speech by James Otis that John Adams described as "a dissertation on the state of nature," and celebrated as the real start of the Revolution. Drawing on an enormous range of both public and personal writings, many rarely or never before discussed, the book follows the development of America's state-of-nature discourse to 1775. The founding generation transformed this flexible concept into a powerful theme that shapes their legacy to this day. No constitutional history of the Revolution can be written without it.

Comparative Constitutional Design

Comparative Constitutional Design PDF Author: Tom Ginsburg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107020565
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
Assesses what we know - and do not know - about comparative constitutional design and particular institutional choices concerning executive power and other issues.

Toward an American Revolution

Toward an American Revolution PDF Author: Gerald John Fresia
Publisher: South End Press
ISBN: 9780896082977
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
In simple direct language, Jerry Fresia reveals the true intent of our "Founding Fathers" who designed the Constitution to protect their property and ensure that the poorer majority would have no real voice in political affairs. Fresia reveals the Founders' fears of "too much" democracy, why the Constitution was opposed by most Americans, and how its ratification was gained through deception and physical coercion. Toward an American Revolution shows how the illegal wars, domestic repression, and economic inequity of late twentieth century America are not incongruous with our Constitutional design. Book jacket.

The American Revolution

The American Revolution PDF Author: Colin Bonwick
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137052503
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Colin Bonwick expands and updates the well-received first edition, and incorporates fresh material drawn from recent scholarship. The structure and argument of the book remain as before, but in particular Bonwick pays greater attention to Native Americans, African Americans, and white women. Though the book traces the attainment of independence, it focuses especially on the internal revolution that created republican governments, and considers the extent of social change. It concludes by examining the development of the American union.

State Constitutional Law

State Constitutional Law PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional law
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description


The Unknown American Revolution

The Unknown American Revolution PDF Author: Gary B. Nash
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440627053
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
In this audacious recasting of the American Revolution, distinguished historian Gary Nash offers a profound new way of thinking about the struggle to create this country, introducing readers to a coalition of patriots from all classes and races of American society. From millennialist preachers to enslaved Africans, disgruntled women to aggrieved Indians, the people so vividly portrayed in this book did not all agree or succeed, but during the exhilarating and messy years of this country's birth, they laid down ideas that have become part of our inheritance and ideals toward which we still strive today.