This book presents an original historical-legal analysis of the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Drawing upon James Madison’s own minutes of the 1787 Convention, it focuses on Madison’s crucial role in shaping a bill of rights that would both reserve the states’ powers and confirm the implied powers doctrine for the federal government. This comprehensive work is indispensable for understanding the origins of the federal system of government and its impact on later developments in the United States.
Winner of the 2010 Book Award from the New England Historical Association American constitutionalism represents this country’s greatest gift to human freedom, yet its story remains largely untold. For over two hundred years, its ideals, ideas, and institutions influenced different peoples in different lands at different times. American constitutionalism and the revolutionary republican documents on which it is based affected countless countries by helping them develop their own constitutional democracies. Western constitutionalism—of which America was a part along with Britain and France—reached a major turning point in global history in 1989, when the forces of democracy exceeded the forces of autocracy for the first time. Historian George Athan Billias traces the spread of American constitutionalism—from Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean region, to Asia and Africa—beginning chronologically with the American Revolution and the fateful "shot heard round the world" and ending with the conclusion of the Cold War in 1989. The American model contributed significantly by spearheading the drive to greater democracy throughout the Western world, and Billias’s landmark study tells a story that will change the way readers view the important role American constitutionalism played during this era.
All populations, including people living in the United States experience new vulnerabilities with globalization. Peoples' jobs are threatened; there are pressures to migrate; and environmental degradation is epidemic. Immense wealth is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite. Other countries have revised their constitutions to protect their citizens from these turbulent forces. The US is a major exception, and this book proposes how Americans might think about constitutional revisions.
This volume offers a complete listing and description of books published on early America between 2001 and 2005. An extraordinary research tool, Books on Early American History and Culture, 2001-2005: An Annotated Bibliography is part of a series listing materials on the history of North America and the Caribbean from 1492 to 1815. This volume includes monographs, reference works, exhibition catalogs, and essay collections published between 2001 and 2005. Each entry provides the name of the work, its author(s) or editor(s), publisher, date of publication, ISBN and/or OCLC number(s), and the Library of Congress call number. Following each detailed citation, there is a brief summary of the work and a list of journals in which it has been reviewed. Organized thematically, the book covers, among many other topics, exploration and colonization; maritime history; environment; Native Americans; race, gender, and ethnicity; migration; labor and class; business; families; religion; material culture; science; education; politics; and military affairs.
Annotation New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., Oxford, Wien. Major Concepts in Politics and Political Theory. Vol. 18 General Editor: Garrett Ward Sheldon. Was the constitutional design of 1787 prompted by the desire of the Founding Fathers to protect their economic interests, as alleged by Charles Beard in his pathbreaking study in 1913, or was it perhaps attributable to the Framers' determination to overcome democratic turbulence in the states, as posited by the currently academically fashionable neo-Beardian school of historical interpretation? Neither thesis, Professor Slonim demonstrates, accords with the documentary record of the Constitutional Convention. Rather, the tension between the overarching need to create an effective national government and the desire to preserve state autonomy shaped the final result at Philadelphia. What emerged was a strong central government within a federal framework. Also analyzed in this volume are several neglected provisions and features of the 1787 constitutional design and their present-day implications. 'Professor Slonim, a seasoned and trenchant analytical observer of the U.S. Constitution, has provided a major contribution to investigative scholarship with his splendid tome. His rejection of the Beardian and neo-Beardian interpretation of the basic document demonstrates that, in fine, the Framers were wise political scientists.' (Henry J. Abraham, James Hart Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs, Emeritus, University of Virginia) 'I know of no American historian steeped as deeply and intelligently in the formation of the U.S. Constitution as S. Slonim, the distinguished Israeli scholar. This collection of Professor Slonim's superbessays on the Founding Era confirms his status as a remarkable independent thinker. I view this book as a must read for everyone interested in constitution-making in the United States and other nations. Slonim's emphasis on federal-state relations as the central theme of.
