Download or read book No State Shall Abridge written by Michael Kent Curtis and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-22 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The book is carefully organized and well written, and it deals with a question that is still of great importance—what is the relationship of the Bill of Rights to the states.”—Journal of American History “Curtis effectively settles a serious legal debate: whether the framers of the 14th Amendment intended to incorporate the Bill of Rights guarantees and thereby inhibit state action. Taking on a formidable array of constitutional scholars, . . . he rebuts their argument with vigor and effectiveness, conclusively demonstrating the legitimacy of the incorporation thesis. . . . A bold, forcefully argued, important study.”—Library Journal

Download or read book American Founding Son written by Gerard N. Magliocca and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2013-09-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Bingham was the architect of the rebirth of the United States following the Civil War. A leading antislavery lawyer and congressman from Ohio, Bingham wrote the most important part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees fundamental rights and equality to all Americans. He was also at the center of two of the greatest trials in history, giving the closing argument in the military prosecution of John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. And more than any other man, Bingham played the key role in shaping the Union’s policy towards the occupied ex-Confederate States, with consequences that still haunt our politics. American Founding Son provides the most complete portrait yet of this remarkable statesman. Drawing on his personal letters and speeches, the book traces Bingham’s life from his humble roots in Pennsylvania through his career as a leader of the Republican Party. Gerard N. Magliocca argues that Bingham and his congressional colleagues transformed the Constitution that the Founding Fathers created, and did so with the same ingenuity that their forbears used to create a more perfect union in the 1780s. In this book, Magliocca restores Bingham to his rightful place as one of our great leaders. Gerard N. Magliocca is the Samuel R. Rosen Professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He is the author of three books on constitutional law, and his work on Andrew Jackson was the subject of an hour-long program on C-Span’s Book TV.

Download or read book Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil written by Mark A. Graber and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-07-03 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil , first published in 2006, concerns what is entailed by pledging allegiance to a constitutional text and tradition saturated with concessions to evil. The Constitution of the United States was originally understood as an effort to mediate controversies between persons who disputed fundamental values, and did not offer a vision of the good society. In order to form a 'more perfect union' with slaveholders, late-eighteenth-century citizens fashioned a constitution that plainly compelled some injustices and was silent or ambiguous on other questions of fundamental right. This constitutional relationship could survive only as long as a bisectional consensus was required to resolve all constitutional questions not settled in 1787. Dred Scott challenges persons committed to human freedom to determine whether antislavery northerners should have provided more accommodations for slavery than were constitutionally strictly necessary or risked the enormous destruction of life and property that preceded Lincoln's new birth of freedom.

Download or read book The Fourteenth Amendment written by William E. Nelson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a remarkably fresh and historically grounded reinterpretation of the American Constitution, William Nelson argues that the fourteenth amendment was written to affirm the general public's long-standing rhetorical commitment to the principles of equality and individual rights on the one hand, and to the principle of local self-rule on the other.

Download or read book The Second Founding written by Ilan Wurman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment, Ilan Wurman provides an illuminating introduction to the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment's famous provisions 'due process of law,' 'equal protection of the laws,' and the 'privileges' or 'immunities' of citizenship. He begins by exploring the antebellum legal meanings of these concepts, starting from Magna Carta, the Statutes of Edward III, and the Petition of Right to William Blackstone and antebellum state court cases. The book then traces how these concepts solved historical problems confronting framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, including the comity rights of free blacks, private violence and the denial of the protection of the laws, and the notorious abridgment of freedmen's rights in the Black Codes. Wurman makes a compelling case that, if the modern originalist Supreme Court interpreted the Amendment in 'the language of the law,' it would lead to surprising and desirable results today.

Download or read book Free Speech The People s Darling Privilege written by Michael Kent Curtis and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-17 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A review chapter is also included to bring the story up-to-date."--Jacket.

Download or read book The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment written by Randy E. Barnett and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned constitutional scholar and a rising star provide a balanced and definitive analysis of the origins and original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Adopted in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment profoundly changed the Constitution, giving the federal judiciary and Congress new powers to protect the fundamental rights of individuals from being violated by the states. Yet, according to Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick, the Supreme Court has long misunderstood or ignored the original meaning of the amendmentÕs key clauses, covering the privileges and immunities of citizenship, due process of law, and the equal protection of the laws. Barnett and Bernick contend that the Fourteenth Amendment was the culmination of decades of debates about the meaning of the antebellum Constitution. Antislavery advocates advanced arguments informed by natural rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the common law. They also utilized what is today called public-meaning originalism. Although their arguments lost in the courts, the Republican Party was formed to advance an antislavery political agenda, eventually bringing about abolition. Then, when abolition alone proved insufficient to thwart Southern repression and provide for civil equality, the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted. It went beyond abolition to enshrine in the Constitution the concept of Republican citizenship and granted Congress power to protect fundamental rights and ensure equality before the law. Finally, Congress used its powers to pass Reconstruction-era civil rights laws that tell us much about the original scope of the amendment. With evenhanded attention to primary sources, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment shows how the principles of the Declaration eventually came to modify the Constitution and proposes workable doctrines for implementing the key provisions of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Download or read book The Heritage Guide to the Constitution written by David F. Forte and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark work of more than one hundred scholars, The Heritage Guide to the Constitution is a unique line-by-line analysis explaining every clause of America's founding charter and its contemporary meaning. In this fully revised second edition, leading scholars in law, history, and public policy offer more than two hundred updated and incisive essays on every clause of the Constitution. From the stirring words of the Preamble to the Twenty-seventh Amendment, you will gain new insights into the ideas that made America, important debates that continue from our Founding, and the Constitution's true meaning for our nation

Download or read book America s Constitution written by Akhil Reed Amar and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In America’s Constitution, one of this era’s most accomplished constitutional law scholars, Akhil Reed Amar, gives the first comprehensive account of one of the world’s great political texts. Incisive, entertaining, and occasionally controversial, this “biography” of America’s framing document explains not only what the Constitution says but also why the Constitution says it. We all know this much: the Constitution is neither immutable nor perfect. Amar shows us how the story of this one relatively compact document reflects the story of America more generally. (For example, much of the Constitution, including the glorious-sounding “We the People,” was lifted from existing American legal texts, including early state constitutions.) In short, the Constitution was as much a product of its environment as it was a product of its individual creators’ inspired genius. Despite the Constitution’s flaws, its role in guiding our republic has been nothing short of amazing. Skillfully placing the document in the context of late-eighteenth-century American politics, America’s Constitution explains, for instance, whether there is anything in the Constitution that is unamendable; the reason America adopted an electoral college; why a president must be at least thirty-five years old; and why–for now, at least–only those citizens who were born under the American flag can become president. From his unique perspective, Amar also gives us unconventional wisdom about the Constitution and its significance throughout the nation’s history. For one thing, we see that the Constitution has been far more democratic than is conventionally understood. Even though the document was drafted by white landholders, a remarkably large number of citizens (by the standards of 1787) were allowed to vote up or down on it, and the document’s later amendments eventually extended the vote to virtually all Americans. We also learn that the Founders’ Constitution was far more slavocratic than many would acknowledge: the “three fifths” clause gave the South extra political clout for every slave it owned or acquired. As a result, slaveholding Virginians held the presidency all but four of the Republic’s first thirty-six years, and proslavery forces eventually came to dominate much of the federal government prior to Lincoln’s election. Ambitious, even-handed, eminently accessible, and often surprising, America’s Constitution is an indispensable work, bound to become a standard reference for any student of history and all citizens of the United States.

Download or read book The Bill of Rights written by Akhil Reed Amar and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are the deep insights of Hugo Black, William Brennan, and Felix Frankfurter that have defined our cherished Bill of Rights fatally flawed? With meticulous historical scholarship and elegant legal interpretation a leading scholar of Constitutional law boldly answers yes as he explodes conventional wisdom about the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution in this incisive new account of our most basic charter of liberty. Akhil Reed Amar brilliantly illuminates in rich detail not simply the text, structure, and history of individual clauses of the 1789 Bill, but their intended relationships to each other and to other constitutional provisions. Amar's corrective does not end there, however, for as his powerful narrative proves, a later generation of antislavery activists profoundly changed the meaning of the Bill in the Reconstruction era. With the Fourteenth Amendment, Americans underwent a new birth of freedom that transformed the old Bill of Rights. We have as a result a complex historical document originally designed to protect the people against self-interested government and revised by the Fourteenth Amendment to guard minority against majority. In our continuing battles over freedom of religion and expression, arms bearing, privacy, states' rights, and popular sovereignty, Amar concludes, we must hearken to both the Founding Fathers who created the Bill and their sons and daughters who reconstructed it. Amar's landmark work invites citizens to a deeper understanding of their Bill of Rights and will set the basic terms of debate about it for modern lawyers, jurists, and historians for years to come.

Download or read book The Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2018-08-20 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States.

Download or read book The Bill of Rights written by Linda R. Monk and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a foreword by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court. An Engaging, Accessible Guide to the Bill of Rights for Everyday Citizens. In The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide, award-winning author and constitutional scholar Linda R. Monk explores the remarkable history of the Bill of Rights amendment by amendment, the Supreme Court's interpretation of each right, and the power of citizens to enforce those rights. Stories of the ordinary people who made the Bill of Rights come alive are featured throughout. These include Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper who became a national civil rights leader; Clarence Earl Gideon, a prisoner whose handwritten petition to the Supreme Court expanded the right to counsel; Mary Beth Tinker, a 13-year-old whose protest of the Vietnam War established free speech rights for students; Michael Hardwick, a bartender who fought for privacy after police entered his bedroom unlawfully; Suzette Kelo, a nurse who opposed the city's takeover of her working-class neighborhood; and Simon Tam, a millennial whose 10-year trademark battle for his band "The Slants" ended in a unanimous Supreme Court victory. Such people prove that, in the words of Judge Learned Hand, "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court, can save it." Exploring the history, scope, and meaning of the first ten amendments-as well as the Fourteenth Amendment, which nationalized them and extended new rights of equality to all-The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide is a powerful examination of the values that define American life and the tools that every citizen needs.

Download or read book The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges and Immunities of American Citizenship written by Kurt T. Lash and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-07 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This exhaustively researched book presents the history behind a revolution in American liberty: the 1868 addition of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It follows the evolution in public understanding of 'the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States', from the early years of the Constitution to the election of 1866. For 92 years nothing in the American Constitution prevented states from abridging freedom of speech, prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or denying the right of peaceful assembly. The suppression of freedom in the southern states convinced the Reconstruction Congress and supporters of the Union to add an amendment forcing the states to respect the rights announced in the first eight amendments. But rather than eradicate state autonomy, the people embraced the Fourteenth Amendment that expanded the protections of the Bill of Rights and preserved the Constitution's original commitment to federalism and the principle of limited national power.

Download or read book Economic Liberties and the Constitution written by Bernard H. Siegan and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2011-12-31 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this seminal work, Bernard Siegan traces the history of onstitutional protection for economic liberties in the United States. He argues that the law began to change with respect to economic liberties in the late 1930s. At that time, the Supreme Court abdicated much of its authority to protect property rights, and instead condoned the expansion of state power over private property. Siegan brings the argument originally advanced in the .first edition completely up to date. He explores the moral position behind capitalism and discusses why former communist countries flirting with decentralization and a free market (for instance, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos) have become more progressive and prosperous as a result. He contrasts the benefits of a free, deregulated economy with the dangers of over-regulation and moves towards socialized welfare—most specifically as happened during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. Supporting his thesis with historical court cases, Siegan discusses the past and present status of economic liberties under the Constitution, clarifies constitutional interpretation and due process, and suggests ways of safeguarding economic liberties. About the original edition, Doug Bandow of Reason noted, "Siegan has written a vitally important book that is sure to ignite an impassioned legal and philosophical debate. The reason—the necessity—for protecting economic liberty is no less than that guaranteeing political and civil liberty." Joseph Sobran of the National Review wrote, "Siegan...makes a powerful general case for economic liberty, on both historical and more strictly empirical grounds.... Siegan has done a brilliant piece of work, not only where it was badly needed, but where the need had hardly been recognized until he addressed it." And Edwin Meese remarked that, "This timely and important book shows how far we have drifted from protecting basic liberties that the Framers of the Constitution sought to secure. I recommend it highly." This new, completely revised edition of Economic Liberties and the Constitution will be essential reading for students of economics, history, public policy, law, and political science.

Download or read book Originalism and the Good Constitution written by John O. McGinnis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originalism holds that the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted according to its meaning at the time it was enacted. In their innovative defense of originalism, John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport maintain that the text of the Constitution should be adhered to by the Supreme Court because it was enacted by supermajorities--both its original enactment under Article VII and subsequent Amendments under Article V. A text approved by supermajorities has special value in a democracy because it has unusually wide support and thus tends to maximize the welfare of the greatest number. The authors recognize and respond to many possible objections. Does originalism perpetuate the dead hand of the past? How can originalism be justified, given the exclusion of African Americans and women from the Constitution and many of its subsequent Amendments? What is originalism's place in interpretation, after two hundred years of non-originalist precedent? A fascinating counterfactual they pose is this: had the Supreme Court not interpreted the Constitution so freely, perhaps the nation would have resorted to the Article V amendment process more often and with greater effect. Their book will be an important contribution to the literature on originalism, now the most prominent theory of constitutional interpretation.

Download or read book Constitution And The Flag The written by Michael Kent Curtis and published by Garland Science. This book was released on 2016-06-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Download or read book A New Birth of Freedom written by Charles L. Black and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Many . . . unwritten rights are somehow inherent in the American scheme of democracy. So where do these freedoms come from? . . . One of the nation`s most venerated thinkers about such matters offers a provocative and refreshing way to answer that question."—Neil A. Lewis, New York Times Book Review "An appealing interpretation of the founding papers."—Michael G. Radigan, New York Law Journal "A remarkably interesting book. It offers a way of looking at the Constitution that I had not thought about before."—Sanford Levinson, School of Law, University of Texas at Austin One of the most respected scholars of constitutional law here argues for a national commitment to human rights based on his interpretation of three critical documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution, and the "citizenship" and "privileges and immunities" clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The book presents a powerful case for reviewing and renewing the basis of our most important human rights.