Presents 80 documents selected to reflect Eric Voegelin's theory that in Western civilization basic political symbolizations tend to be variants of the original symbolization of Judeo-Christian religious tradition. These documents demonstrate the continuity of symbols preceding the writing of the Constitution and all contain a number of basic symbols such as: a constitution as higher law, popular sovereignty, legislative supremacy, the deliberative process, and a virtuous people. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The peace, order and good government (POGG) clause is found in the constitutions of almost all Commonwealth countries. Since its introduction, the clause has played a significant role in colonial and post-colonial constitutionalism in Commonwealth jurisdictions. This book is the first full length analysis of the various dimensions of the peace, order and good government clause. It argues that the origins of the POGG clause mark it out as an anachronistic feature of British constitutionalism when seen against a modern setting of human rights, liberty and democratisation. The book traces the history, politics and applications of the clause through the colonial period in Commonwealth territories to date. It provides critical evaluation of the POGG clause in a cross-continental enquiry, examining statutory, political and constitutional deployment in Australia, Canada, India, Nigeria, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The evaluation demonstrates that the POGG clause has relevance in a number of significant aspects of legal and socio-political ordering across the Commonwealth featuring prominently in the federalism question, emergency powers and the review of administrative powers. It maintains that while the clause is not entirely devoid of positive value, the POGG clause has been used not only to further the objects of colonialism, but also authoritarianism and apartheid. This book calls for a rethink of the prevailing subjective approach to the interpretation of the clause. The book will be of interest to students and academics of public law, human rights law, and comparative politics.
The book is a work of non-fiction. The book is a historical analysis of the evolution of a uniquely American constitutionalism that began with the original English royal charters for the exploration and exploitation of North America. When the U.S. Constitution was written in 1787, the accepted conception of a constitution was that of the British constitution, upon which the colonists had relied in asserting their rights with respect to the imperium, comprised of ancient documents, parliamentary enactments, administrative regulations, judicial pronouncements, and established custom. Of equal significance, the laws comprising the constitution did not differ from other statutes and as a consequence, there was no law endowed with greater sanctity than other legislative enactments. In framing the revolutionary state constitutions following the retreat of the crown governments in the colonies, as well as the later federal Constitution, the Revolutionaries fundamentally reconceived a constitution as being the single authoritative source of fundamental law that was superior to all other statutes, regulations, and judicial decisions, that was ratified by the states and that was subject to revision only through a formal amendment process. This new constitutional conception has been hailed as the great innovation of the revolutionary period, and deservedly so. This American constitutionalism had its origins in the now largely overlooked royal charters for the exploration of North America beginning with the charter granted to Sir Humphrey Gilbert by Elizabeth I in 1578. The book follows the development of this constitutional tradition from the early charters of the Virginia Companies and the covenants entered of the New England colonies, through the proprietary charters of the Middle Atlantic colonies. On the basis of those foundational documents, the colonists fashioned governments that came to be comprised not only of an executive, but an elected legislature and a judiciary. In those foundational documents and in the acts of the colonial legislatures, the settlers sought to harmonize their aspirations for just institutions and individual rights with the exigencies and imperatives of an alien and often hostile environment. When the colonies faced the withdrawal of the crown governments in 1775, they drew on their experience, which they formalized in written constitutions. This uniquely American constitutional tradition of the charters, covenants and state constitutions was the foundation of the federal Constitution and of the process by which the Constitution was written and ratified a decade later.
Departing from traditional approaches to colonial legal history, Mary Sarah Bilder argues that American law and legal culture developed within the framework of an evolving, unwritten transatlantic constitution that lawyers, legislators, and litigants on both sides of the Atlantic understood. The central tenet of this constitution—that colonial laws and customs could not be repugnant to the laws of England but could diverge for local circumstances—shaped the legal development of the colonial world. Focusing on practices rather than doctrines, Bilder describes how the pragmatic and flexible conversation about this constitution shaped colonial law: the development of the legal profession; the place of English law in the colonies; the existence of equity courts and legislative equitable relief; property rights for women and inheritance laws; commercial law and currency reform; and laws governing religious establishment. Using as a case study the corporate colony of Rhode Island, which had the largest number of appeals of any mainland colony to the English Privy Council, she reconstructs a largely unknown world of pre-Constitutional legal culture.
"It presents an alternative perspective on the end of Empire by focusing upon one aspect of constitutional decolonization and the importance of the local legal culture in determining each dependency's constitutional settlement, and provides a series of empirical case studies on the incorporation of human rights instruments into domestic constitutions when negotiated between a state and its dependencies. More generally this book highlights Britain's human rights legacy to its former Empire."--BOOK JACKET.
According to the traditional understanding of American constitutional law, the Revolution produced a new conception of the constitution as a set of restrictions on the power of the state rather than a mere description of governmental roles. Daniel J. Hulsebosch complicates this viewpoint by arguing that American ideas of constitutions were based on British ones and that, in New York, those ideas evolved over the long eighteenth century as New York moved from the periphery of the British Atlantic empire to the center of a new continental empire. Hulsebosch explains how colonists and administrators reconfigured British legal sources to suit their needs in an expanding empire. In this story, familiar characters such as Alexander Hamilton and James Kent appear in a new light as among the nation's most important framers, and forgotten loyalists such as Superintendent of Indian Affairs Sir William Johnson and lawyer William Smith Jr. are rightly returned to places of prominence. In his paradigm-shifting analysis, Hulsebosch captures the essential paradox at the heart of American constitutional history: the Revolution, which brought political independence and substituted the people for the British crown as the source of legitimate authority, also led to the establishment of a newly powerful constitution and a new postcolonial genre of constitutional law that would have been the envy of the British imperial agents who had struggled to govern the colonies before the Revolution.
A first-of-its-kind resource studying the operation of constitutional law across the entire Caribbean, embracing the linguistic, political, and cultural diversity of the region, Each jurisdictional chapter shares a common format and structure to aid comparison between different jurisdictions, Contributors from a variety of different disciplines-law, history, and political science-provide a range of perspectives on the study of the region's constitutions Book jacket.
In The Origins of American Constitutionalism, Donald S. Lutz challenges the prevailing notion that the United States Constitution was either essentially inherited from the British or simply invented by the Federalists in the summer of 1787. His political theory of constitutionalism acknowledges the contributions of the British and the Federalists. Lutz also asserts, however, that the U.S. Constitution derives in form and content from a tradition of American colonial characters and documents of political foundation that began a century and a half prior to 1787. Lutz builds his argument around a close textual analysis of such documents as the Mayflower Compact, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the Rode Island Charter of 1663, the first state constitutions, the Declaration of Independence, and the Articles of Confederation. He shows that American Constitutionalism developed to a considerable degree from radical Protestant interpretations of the Judeo-Christian tradition that were first secularized into political compacts and then incorporated into constitutions and bills of rights. Over time, appropriations that enriched this tradition included aspects of English common law and English Whig theory. Lutz also looks at the influence of Montesquieu, Locke, Blackstone, and Hume. In addition, he details the importance of Americans' experiences and history to the political theory that produced the Constitution. By placing the Constitution within this broader constitutional system, Lutz demonstrates that the document is the culmination of a long process and must be understood within this context. His argument also offers a fresh view of current controversies over the Framers' intentions, the place of religion in American politics, and citizens' continuing role in the development of the constitutional tradition.
Colonial Constitutionalism exposes one of the great failures of American democracy. It posits that the creation of a U.S. 'empire' over the last century violated the basis of American constitutionalism through its failure to fully admit annexed offshore territories into the Union. The book's focused case studies analyze each of America's quasi-colonies, revealing how the perpetuation of a this 'imperialist' strategy has rendered the inhabitants second class citizens. E. Robert Statham, Jr.'s work emphasizes the pressing need--in the face of increasingly strident calls for sovereign independence from America's offshore territories--for a modern American republic, fundamentally incompatible with imperialism and colonialism, to grant full U.S. statehood to its overseas possessions.
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.
