Author: David J. Bodenhamer Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 019991303X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 292
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: David J. Bodenhamer Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0195378326 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 168
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.
Author: Saul Cornell Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0195341031 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
A leading constitutional historian argues that the Founding Fathers viewed the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but rather an obligation a citizen owed to the government to arm themselves and participate in a well-regulated militia.
Author: Patrick T. Conley Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 9780945612292 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 572
Book Description
Fourteen individual state essays elucidate the complexitites of local and regional interests that shaped the debate over individual rights and the eventual adoption of the Bill of Rights.
Author: David J. Bodenhamer Publisher: OUP USA ISBN: 0195378334 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 292
Book Description
The Revolutionary Constitution examines how the Constitution has served as a dynamic and contested framework for legitimating power and advancing liberty in which our past concerns and experiences influence our present understanding. Informed by the latest scholarship, the book is an interpretive synthesis linking constitutional history with American political and social history.
Author: Eric Foner Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 0393652580 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning scholar, a timely history of the constitutional changes that built equality into the nation’s foundation and how those guarantees have been shaken over time. The Declaration of Independence announced equality as an American ideal, but it took the Civil War and the subsequent adoption of three constitutional amendments to establish that ideal as American law. The Reconstruction amendments abolished slavery, guaranteed all persons due process and equal protection of the law, and equipped black men with the right to vote. They established the principle of birthright citizenship and guaranteed the privileges and immunities of all citizens. The federal government, not the states, was charged with enforcement, reversing the priority of the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In grafting the principle of equality onto the Constitution, these revolutionary changes marked the second founding of the United States. Eric Foner’s compact, insightful history traces the arc of these pivotal amendments from their dramatic origins in pre–Civil War mass meetings of African-American “colored citizens” and in Republican party politics to their virtual nullification in the late nineteenth century. A series of momentous decisions by the Supreme Court narrowed the rights guaranteed in the amendments, while the states actively undermined them. The Jim Crow system was the result. Again today there are serious political challenges to birthright citizenship, voting rights, due process, and equal protection of the law. Like all great works of history, this one informs our understanding of the present as well as the past: knowledge and vigilance are always necessary to secure our basic rights.
Author: David J. Bodenhamer
Author: David J. Bodenhamer
Author: E. A. Harper
Author: Saul Cornell
Author: Patrick T. Conley
Author: Sampson R. Child
Author: Rich Smith
Author: Sampson R. Child
Author: David J. Bodenhamer
Author: Eric Foner