A Constitution for the Living

A Constitution for the Living PDF Author: Beau Breslin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780804776707
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
What would America's Constitutions have looked like if each generation wrote its own? "The earth belongs...to the living, the dead have neither powers nor rights over it." These famous words, written by Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, reflect Jefferson's lifelong belief that each generation ought to write its own Constitution. According to Jefferson each generation should take an active role in endorsing, renouncing, or changing the nation's fundamental law. Perhaps if he were alive today to witness our seething debates over constitutional interpretation, he would feel vindicated in this belief. Madison's response was that a Constitution must endure over many generations to gain the credibility needed to keep a nation strong and united. History tells us that Jefferson lost that debate. But what if he had prevailed? In A Constitution for the Living, Beau Breslin reimagines American history to answer that question. By tracing the story from the 1787 Constitutional Convention up to the present, Breslin presents an engaging and insightful narrative account of historical figures and how they might have shaped their particular generation's Constitution. For all those who want to be in the candlelit taverns where the Founders sat debating fundamental issues over wine; to witness towering figures of American history, from Abraham Lincoln to Booker T. Washington, play out hypothetical meetings and conversations that are startling and revealing; and to attend a Constitutional Convention taking place in the present day--this book brings these possibilities to life with sensitivity, verve, and compelling historical detail. This book is, above all, a call for a more engaged American public at a time when change seems close at hand, if we dare to imagine it.

A Constitution for the Living

A Constitution for the Living PDF Author: Beau Breslin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780804776707
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book Here

Book Description
What would America's Constitutions have looked like if each generation wrote its own? "The earth belongs...to the living, the dead have neither powers nor rights over it." These famous words, written by Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, reflect Jefferson's lifelong belief that each generation ought to write its own Constitution. According to Jefferson each generation should take an active role in endorsing, renouncing, or changing the nation's fundamental law. Perhaps if he were alive today to witness our seething debates over constitutional interpretation, he would feel vindicated in this belief. Madison's response was that a Constitution must endure over many generations to gain the credibility needed to keep a nation strong and united. History tells us that Jefferson lost that debate. But what if he had prevailed? In A Constitution for the Living, Beau Breslin reimagines American history to answer that question. By tracing the story from the 1787 Constitutional Convention up to the present, Breslin presents an engaging and insightful narrative account of historical figures and how they might have shaped their particular generation's Constitution. For all those who want to be in the candlelit taverns where the Founders sat debating fundamental issues over wine; to witness towering figures of American history, from Abraham Lincoln to Booker T. Washington, play out hypothetical meetings and conversations that are startling and revealing; and to attend a Constitutional Convention taking place in the present day--this book brings these possibilities to life with sensitivity, verve, and compelling historical detail. This book is, above all, a call for a more engaged American public at a time when change seems close at hand, if we dare to imagine it.

Constitutionalism

Constitutionalism PDF 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.

Government's Place in the Market

Government's Place in the Market PDF Author: Eliot Spitzer
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262295113
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
In his first book, the former New York governor and current CNN cohost offers a manifesto on the economy and the public interest. As New York State Attorney General from 1998 to 2006, Eliot Spitzer successfully pursued corporate crime, including stock price inflation, securities fraud, and predatory lending practices. Drawing on those experiences, in this book Spitzer considers when and how the government should intervene in the workings of the market. The 2009 American bank bailout, he argues, was the wrong way: it understandably turned government intervention into a flashpoint for public disgust because it socialized risk, privatized benefit, and left standing institutions too big to fail, incompetent regulators, and deficient corporate governance. That's unfortunate, because good regulatory policy, he claims, can make markets and firms work efficiently, equitably, and in service of fundamental public values. Spitzer lays out the right reasons for government intervention in the market: to guarantee transparency, to overcome market failures, and to guard our core values against the market's unfair biases such as racism. With specific proposals to serve those ends—from improving corporate governance to making firms responsible for their own risky behavior—he offers a much-needed blueprint for the proper role of government in the market. Finally, taking account of regulatory changes since the crash of 2008, he suggests how to rebuild public trust in government so real change is possible. Responses to Spitzer by Sarah Binder, Andrew Gelman, and John Sides, Dean Baker, and Robert Johnson, raise issues of politics, ideology, and policy.

Constitutional Redemption

Constitutional Redemption PDF Author: J. M. Balkin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674058747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Political constitutions are compromises with injustice. What makes the U.S. Constitution legitimate is Americans’ faith that the constitutional system can be made “a more perfect union.” Balkin argues that the American constitutional project is based in hope and a narrative of shared redemption, and its destiny is still over the horizon.

The Future of Human Rights

The Future of Human Rights PDF Author: Alison Brysk
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509520619
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
Human rights have fallen on hard times, yet they are more necessary than ever. People all over the world – from Amazonian villages to Iranian prisons – need human rights to gain recognition, campaign for justice, and save lives. But how can we secure a brighter future for human rights? What changes are required to confront the regime’s weaknesses and emerging global challenges? In this cutting-edge analysis, Alison Brysk sets out a pragmatic reformist agenda for human rights in the twenty-first century. Tracing problems and solutions through contemporary case studies – the plight of refugees, declining democracies such as Mexico and Turkey, the expansion of women’s rights, new norms for indigenous peoples, and rights regression in the USA – she shows that the dynamic strength of human rights lies in their evolving political practice. This distinctive vision demands that we build upon the gains of the human rights regime to construct new pathways which address historic rights gaps, from citizenship to security, from environmental protection to resurgent nationalism, and to globalization itself. Drawing on the author’s extensive experience as a leading human rights scholar and activist, The Future of Human Rights offers a broad and authoritative guide to the big questions in global human rights governance today.

Czecho/Slovakia

Czecho/Slovakia PDF Author: Eric Stein
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472086283
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
DIVDescribes the peaceful breakup of the Czechoslovak Federation /div

Women of the Constitution

Women of the Constitution PDF Author: Janice E. McKenney
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0810884984
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Women of the Constitution follows in the footsteps of the 1912 work devoted to biographical sketches of the spouses of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. This book will be the first work devoted exclusively to providing brief biographies of the forty-three wives o...

The Calculus of Consent

The Calculus of Consent PDF Author: James M. Buchanan
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472061006
Category : Decision-making
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
A scientific study of the political and economic factors influencing democratic decision making

"Whom Can We Trust Now?"

Author: Brian F. Carso (Jr.)
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739112564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The ancient crime of treason posed legal, political, and intellectual problems for the United States from its conception through the Civil War. Using an interdisciplinary approach, historian and lawyer Brian F. Carso, Jr., demonstrates that although treason law was conflicted and awkward, the broader idea of treason gave recognizable shape to abstract ideas of loyalty, betrayal, allegiance, and political obligation in a young democratic republic.

Democratic Decline in Hungary

Democratic Decline in Hungary PDF Author: András L. Pap
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351684671
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
This book shows the rise and morphology of a self-identified `illiberal democracy’, the first 21st century illiberal political regime arising in the European Union. Since 2010, Viktor Orbán’s governments in Hungary have convincingly offered an anti-modernist and anti-cosmopolitan/anti-European Unionist rhetoric, discourse and constitutional identity to challenge neo-liberal democracy. The Hungarian case provides unique observation points for students of transitology, especially those who are interested in states which are to abandon pathways of liberal democracy. The author demonstrates how illiberalism is present both in `how’ and `what’ is being done: the style, format and procedure of legislation; as well as the substance: the dismantling of institutional rule of law guarantees and the weakening of checks and balances. The book also discusses the ideological commitments and constitutionally framed and cemented value preferences, and a reconstituted and re-conceptualized relationship between the state and its citizens, which is not evidently supported by Hungarians’ value system and life-style choices.