Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In the first three chapters of the third book, Story gives a short history of the origin and adoption of the United States Constitution, the objections to the Constitution, and the nature of the Constitution – whether it is a compact between sovereign states, or the supreme and national law of the United States. In Chapter 4, Story enters ...
A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America is a three-volume work by John Adams, written between 1787 and 1788.The text was Adams’ response to criticisms of the proposed American government, particularly those made by French economist and political theorist Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, who had argued against bicameralism and separation of powers.
In U.S. history, constitutionalism, in both its descriptive and prescriptive sense, has traditionally focused on the federal constitution. Indeed, a routine assumption of many scholars has been that understanding "American constitutionalism" necessarily entails the thought that went into the drafting of the federal constitution and the American ...
In ratification conventions, the anti-slavery delegates sometimes began as anti-ratification votes. Still, the Constitution "as written" was an improvement over the Articles from an abolitionist point of view. The Constitution provided for abolition of the slave trade but the Articles did not. The outcome could be determined gradually over time ...
Constitutionalism in the United States is a basic value espoused by political parties, activist groups and individuals across a wide range of the political spectrum, that the powers of federal, state and local governments are limited by the Constitution of the United States and that the civil and political rights of citizens shall not be violated.
The Constitution did not originally define who was eligible to vote, allowing each state to determine who was eligible. In the early history of the U.S., most states allowed only white male adult property owners to vote; the notable exception was New Jersey, where women were able to vote on the same basis as men.
Originalism is a legal theory that bases constitutional, judicial, and statutory interpretation of text on the original understanding at the time of its adoption. Proponents of the theory object to judicial activism and other interpretations related to a living constitution framework.
The Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History. New York: Penguin Books, 1986. ISBN 0-14-008744-3 (edited by Kammen) A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture (1986) ISBN 978-1-4128-2776-8; A Season of Youth: The American Revolution in the Historical Imagination (1988)