John Ross Browne (1817-1875) of Kentucky, the official reporter for the California State Constitutional Convention of September-October 1849, came to California in 1849 as an employee of the government revenue service. He traveled widely in the next two decades before settling down in Oakland. Report of the debates of the Convention of California (1850) comprises the official records of the convention. Browne had been a shorthand reporter for the U.S. Senate before coming west, and he provides transcripts of the proclamation calling the convention, proceedings of the convention, text of the state constitution adopted by the delegates, and official correspondence regarding the convention and the institution of state government under that constitution.
Taming the Elephant is the last of four volumes in the distinguished California History Sesquicentennial Series, an outstanding compilation of original essays by leading historians and writers. These topical, interrelated volumes reexamine the meaning of the founding of modern California during the state's pioneer period. General themes run through all four volumes: the interplay of traditional cultures and frontier innovation in the creation of a distinctive California society; the dynamic interaction of people and nature and the beginnings of massive environmental change; the impact of the California experience on the nation and the world; the influence of pioneer patterns on modern California; and the legacy of ethnic and cultural diversity as a major influence on the state's history. This fourth volume treats the role of post–Gold Rush California government, politics, and law in the building of a dynamic state, with influences that persist today. Provocative essays investigate the creation of constitutional foundations, law and jurisprudence, the formation of government agencies, and the development of public policy. Authors chart the roles played by diverse groups—criminals and peace officers, entrepreneurs and miners, farmers and public officials, defenders of discrimination and female and African American activists. The essays also explore subjects largely overlooked in the past, such as the significance of local and federal government in pioneer California and early struggles to secure civil rights for women and racial minorities.
In this book, James R. Maxeiner takes on the challenge of demonstrating that historically American law makers did consider a statutory methodology as part of formulating laws. In the nineteenth century, when the people wanted laws they could understand, lawyers inflicted judge-made, statute-destroying, common law on them. Maxeiner offers the cure for common law, in the form of sensible statute law. Building on this historical evidence, Maxeiner shows how rule-making in civil law jurisdictions in other countries makes for a far more equitable legal system. Sensible statute laws fit together: one statute governs, as opposed to several laws that even lawyers have trouble disentangling. In a statute law system, lawmakers make laws for the common good in sensible procedures, and judges apply sensible laws and do not make them. This book shows how such a system works in Germany and would be a solution for the American legal system as well.
State constitutions are blueprints for government institutions, declarations of collective identity, statements of principle, values, and goals. It naturally follows, and this book demonstrates, that the founding documents and the conventions that produced them reflect the emerging dynamics of American democracy in the nineteenth century. Nowhere is this more clear, Amy Bridges tells us in Democratic Beginnings, than in the American West. A close study of the constitutional conventions that founded eleven Western states, and of the constitutions they wrote, Democratic Beginnings traces the arc of Western development. Spanning the sixty years from California's constitution of 1850 to those of Arizona and New Mexico in 1910—and including Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming—Bridges shows how delegates to these states' constitutional conventions, pragmatically and creatively devised law and policy for the unprecedented challenges they faced. Far from the "island communities" of conventional 19th-century American history, these delegates, and the territories they represented, were thoroughly engaged in the central issues of their times, at the local, regional, and national levels--mining and agriculture, labor law and corporate responsibilities, water rights and government obligations, education and judicial practice. Theirs was not the Founders' constitutional convention. With very different tasks, delegates more representative of the population, and the experience of living in a democratic republic that their forebears lacked, the Western delegates found unparalleled opportunities at the conventions for popular input into law and public policy. What they did with these opportunities, and how these in turn shaped the emerging American West, is the story Democratic Beginnings tells.
Part One. The history of the California Constitution -- Part Two. The California Constitution and commentary -- Article I. Declaration of rights -- Article II. Voting, initiative, referendum, and recall -- Article III. State of California -- Article IV. Legislative -- Article V. Executive -- Article VI. Judicial -- Article VII. Public officers and employees -- Article VIII. [Repealed] -- Article IX. Education -- Article X. Water -- Article XA. Water resources development -- Article XB. Marine resources protection act of 1990 -- Article XI. Local government -- Article XII. Public utilities -- Article XIII. Taxation -- Article XIIIA. [Tax limitation] -- Article XIIIB. Government spending limitation -- Article XIIIC. [Voter approval for local tax levies] -- Article XIIID. [Assessment and property-related fee reform] -- Article XIV. Labor relations -- Article XV. Usury -- Article XVI. Public finance -- Article XVII. [Repealed] -- Article XVIII. Amending and revising the Constitution -- Article XIX. Motor vehicle revenues -- Article XIXA. Loans from the public transportation account or local transportation funds -- Article XIXB. Motor vehicle fuel sales tax revenues and transportation improvement funding -- Article XIXC. [Enforcement of certain provisions] -- Article XX. Miscellaneous sujects -- Article XXI. Redistricting of Senate, Assembly, Congressional, and board of equalization districts -- Article XXII. [Architectural and engineering services] -- [Articles XXIII throught XXVIII have either been repealed or renumbered; there are no Articles XXIX-XXXIII.] -- Article XXXIV. Public housing project law -- Article XXXV. Medical research
Boundaries—lines imposed on the landscape—shape our lives, dictating everything from which candidates we vote for to what schools our children attend to the communities with which we identify. In Creating the American West, historian Derek R. Everett examines the function of these internal lines in American history generally and in the West in particular. Drawing lines to create states in the trans-Mississippi West, he points out, imposed a specific form of political organization that made the West truly American. Everett examines how settlers lobbied for boundaries and how politicians imposed them. He examines the origins of boundary-making in the United States from the colonial era through the Louisiana Purchase. Case studies then explore the ethnic, sectional, political, and economic angles of boundaries. Everett first examines the boundaries between Arkansas and its neighboring Native cultures, and the pseudo war between Missouri and Iowa. He then traces the lines splitting the Oregon Country and the states of California and Nevada, and considers the ethnic and political consequences of the boundary between New Mexico and Colorado. He explains the evolution of the line splitting the Dakotas, and concludes with a discussion of ways in which state boundaries can contribute toward new interpretations of borderlands history. A major theme in the history of state boundaries is the question of whether to use geometric or geographic lines—in other words, lines corresponding to parallels and meridians or those fashioned by natural features. With the distribution of western land, Everett shows, geography gave way to geometry and transformed the West. The end of boundary-making in the late nineteenth century is not the end of the story, however. These lines continue to complicate a host of issues including water rights, taxes, political representation, and immigration. Creating the American West shows how the past continues to shape the present.
