One of the half dozen most important books ever written about the American Revolution.--New York Times Book Review "During the nearly two decades since its publication, this book has set the pace, furnished benchmarks, and afforded targets for many subsequent studies. If ever a work of history merited the appellation 'modern classic,' this is surely one.--William and Mary Quarterly "[A] brilliant and sweeping interpretation of political culture in the Revolutionary generation.--New England Quarterly "This is an admirable, thoughtful, and penetrating study of one of the most important chapters in American history.--Wesley Frank Craven
The second edition of The Law of American State Constitutions provides complete coverage of the legal doctrines surrounding, applying to, and arising from American state constitutions and their judicial interpretation. Drawing on examples from specific states, Professors Williams and Friedman analyze the nature and function of state constitutions in contrast to the federal Constitution, including rights, separation of powers, issues of interpretation, and the processes for amendment and revision. In this edition, Williams and Friedman focus on recent developments, including the state constitutional dimensions of same-sex marriage and the reaction of state courts to U.S. Supreme Court decision making. This edition of The Law of American State Constitutions remains an important analytical tool that explains the unique character and the range of interpretive approaches to these constitutions. It covers the structure of state governments under state constitutions as well as the distribution of powers among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Like the first edition, this edition presents a complete picture of state constitutional law and the attributes and features that make this body of law so distinctive.
Provides an account of the rebellion of the unprotected frontiersmen and the unfranchised artisans, who constituted two-thirds of the population in Pennsylvania, against the Quaker property owners in their attempt to achieve a voice in the government and establish a liberal constitution in 1776.
Democracy is established as a generally uncontested ideal, while regimes inspired by this form of government fall under constant criticism. Hence, the steady erosion of confidence in representatives that has become one of the major political issues of our time. Amidst these challenges, the paradox remains that while citizens are less likely to make the trip to the ballot box, the world is far from entering a phase of general political apathy. Demonstrations and activism abound in the streets, in cities across the globe and on the internet. Pierre Rosanvallon analyses the mechanisms used to register a citizen's expression of confidence or distrust, and then focuses on the role that distrust plays in democracy from both a historical and theoretical perspective. This radical shift in perspective uncovers a series of practices - surveillance, prevention, and judgement - through which society corrects and exerts pressure.
Common sense has always been a cornerstone of American politics. In 1776, Tom Paine’s vital pamphlet with that title sparked the American Revolution. And today, common sense—the wisdom of ordinary people, knowledge so self-evident that it is beyond debate—remains a powerful political ideal, utilized alike by George W. Bush’s aw-shucks articulations and Barack Obama’s down-to-earth reasonableness. But far from self-evident is where our faith in common sense comes from and how its populist logic has shaped modern democracy. Common Sense: A Political History is the first book to explore this essential political phenomenon. The story begins in the aftermath of England’s Glorious Revolution, when common sense first became a political ideal worth struggling over. Sophia Rosenfeld’s accessible and insightful account then wends its way across two continents and multiple centuries, revealing the remarkable individuals who appropriated the old, seemingly universal idea of common sense and the new strategic uses they made of it. Paine may have boasted that common sense is always on the side of the people and opposed to the rule of kings, but Rosenfeld demonstrates that common sense has been used to foster demagoguery and exclusivity as well as popular sovereignty. She provides a new account of the transatlantic Enlightenment and the Age of Revolutions, and offers a fresh reading on what the eighteenth century bequeathed to the political ferment of our own time. Far from commonsensical, the history of common sense turns out to be rife with paradox and surprise.
In 1755 Benjamin Franklin observed "a man without a wife is but half a man" and since then historians have taken Franklin at his word. In Citizen Bachelors, John Gilbert McCurdy demonstrates that Franklin's comment was only one side of a much larger conversation. Early Americans vigorously debated the status of unmarried men and this debate was instrumental in the creation of American citizenship. In a sweeping examination of the bachelor in early America, McCurdy fleshes out a largely unexamined aspect of the history of gender. Single men were instrumental to the settlement of the United States and for most of the seventeenth century their presence was not particularly problematic. However, as the colonies matured, Americans began to worry about those who stood outside the family. Lawmakers began to limit the freedoms of single men with laws requiring bachelors to pay higher taxes and face harsher penalties for crimes than married men, while moralists began to decry the sexual immorality of unmarried men. But many resisted these new tactics, including single men who reveled in their hedonistic reputations by delighting in sexual horseplay without marital consequences. At the time of the Revolution, these conflicting views were confronted head-on. As the incipient American state needed men to stand at the forefront of the fight for independence, the bachelor came to be seen as possessing just the sort of political, social, and economic agency associated with citizenship in a democratic society. When the war was won, these men demanded an end to their unequal treatment, sometimes grudgingly, and the citizen bachelor was welcomed into American society. Drawing on sources as varied as laws, diaries, political manifestos, and newspapers, McCurdy shows that in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the bachelor was a simultaneously suspicious and desirable figure: suspicious because he was not tethered to family and household obligations yet desirable because he was free to study, devote himself to political office, and fight and die in battle. He suggests that this dichotomy remains with us to this day and thus it is in early America that we find the origins of the modern-day identity of the bachelor as a symbol of masculine independence. McCurdy also observes that by extending citizenship to bachelors, the founders affirmed their commitment to individual freedom, a commitment that has subsequently come to define the very essence of American citizenship.
How state constitutional reform guides and stabilizes American constitutional and political development State constitution reform guides and stabilizes American constitutional and political development. Using data sets and historical case studies, Robinson Woodward-Burns shows how the federal government has repeatedly deferred to state constitutional reform to manage or address difficult national constitutional controversies, including conflicts over the regulation of slavery, banking and taxation, women's suffrage, labor and welfare rights, voting and civil rights, and gender discrimination.
The decline of statism as the world's dominant ideology has ignited a fierce debate over the evolving shape and power of federalism in global society. The popular demand for devolution has shifted the locus of power from national government to smaller regional units and heralded the reconceptualization of international law away from the idea of sovereignty, toward one of jurisdiction. This timely set of essays studies the impact wrought by these centrifugal forces across Europe, Africa, and the Americas, and analyzes the latest movements for constitutional change, self-determination, and separation. Comparative Federalism in the Devolution Era offers political scientists and legal scholars a new perspective on the diverse nature and exercise of postmodern federalism, and the continuing struggle between differing views of the national-local relationship.
Explore the controversial legal history of the formation of the United States Prestatehood Legal Materials is your one-stop guide to the history and development of law in the U.S. and the change from territory to statehood. Unprecedented in its coverage of territorial government, this book identifies a wide range of available resources from each state to reveal the underlying legal principles that helped form the United States. In this unique publication, a state expert compiles each chapter using his or her own style, culminating in a diverse sourcebook that is interesting as well as informative. In Prestatehood Legal Materials, you will find bibliographies, references, and discussion on a varied list of source materials, including: state codes drafted by Congress county, state, and national archives journals and digests state and federal reports, citations, surveys, and studies books, manuscripts, papers, speeches, and theses town and city records and documents Web sites to help your search for more information and more Prestatehood Legal Materials provides you with brief overviews of state histories from colonization to acceptance into the United States. In this book, you will see how foreign countries controlled the laws of these territories and how these states eventually broke away to govern themselves. The text also covers the legal issues with Native Americans, inter-state and the Mexico and Canadian borders, and the development of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of state government. This guide focuses on materials that are readily available to historians, political scientists, legal scholars, and researchers. Resources that assist in locating not-so-easily accessible materials are also covered. Special sections focus on the legal resources of colonial New York City and Washington, DC—which is still technically in its prestatehood stage. Due to the enormity of this project, the editor of Prestatehood Legal Materials created a Web page where updates, corrections, additions and more will be posted.
