Download or read book State Constitutions for the Twenty first Century Volume 3 written by G. Alan Tarr and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2007-06-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nationally recognized experts analyze how states deal with major constitutional issues.
Download or read book The People s Constitution written by John F. Kowal and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 233-year story of how the American people have taken an imperfect constitution—the product of compromises and an artifact of its time—and made it more democratic Who wrote the Constitution? That’s obvious, we think: fifty-five men in Philadelphia in 1787. But much of the Constitution was actually written later, in a series of twenty-seven amendments enacted over the course of two centuries. The real history of the Constitution is the astonishing story of how subsequent generations have reshaped our founding document amid some of the most colorful, contested, and controversial battles in American political life. It’s a story of how We the People have improved our government’s structure and expanded the scope of our democracy during eras of transformational social change. The People’s Constitution is an elegant, sobering, and masterly account of the evolution of American democracy. From the addition of the Bill of Rights, a promise made to save the Constitution from near certain defeat, to the post–Civil War battle over the Fourteenth Amendment, from the rise and fall of the “noble experiment” of Prohibition to the defeat and resurgence of an Equal Rights Amendment a century in the making, The People’s Constitution is the first book of its kind: a vital guide to America’s national charter, and an alternative history of the continuing struggle to realize the Framers’ promise of a more perfect union.
Download or read book The Progressives Century written by Stephen Skowronek and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chapter 20. How the Progressives Became the Tea Party's Mortal Enemy: Networks, Movements, and the Political Currency of Ideas -- Chapter 21. What Is to Be Done? A New Progressivism for a New Century -- List of Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z
Download or read book State Constitutions for the Twenty first Century Volume 1 written by G. Alan Tarr and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2006-06-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first systematic analysis of the obstacles to state constitutional reform.
Download or read book The Labour Party and Constitutional Reform written by Peter Dorey and published by Palgrave MacMillan. This book was released on 2008-06-17 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the Labour Party's approach to constitutional reforms in historical context, and how these have been pursued more to 'modernize' political institutions, rather that radically transform them. Dorey explains the reasons for this constitutional conservatism, and the debates which specific reform proposals have prompted in the Party.
Download or read book Responding to Imperfection written by Sanford Levinson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-24 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An increasing number of constitutional theorists, within both the legal academy and university departments of government, are focusing on the conceptual and political problems attached to the notion of constitutional amendment. Amendments are, among other things, recognitions of the imperfection of existing schemes of government. The relative ease or difficulty of amendment has significant implications for the ways that governments respond to problems that call either for new structures of governance or new powers for already established structures. This book brings together essays by leading legal authorities and political scientists on a range of questions from whether the U.S. Constitution is subject to amendment by procedures other than those authorized by Article V to how significant change is conceptualized within classical rabbinic Judaism. Though the essays are concerned for the most part with the American experience, other constitutional traditions are considered as well. The contributors include Bruce Ackerman, Akhil Reed Amar, Mark E. Brandon, David R. Dow, Stephen M. Griffin, Stephen Holmes and Cass R. Sunstein, Sanford Levinson, Donald Lutz, Walter Murphy, Frederick Schauer, John R. Vile, and Noam J. Zohar.
Download or read book Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments written by Yaniv Roznai and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can constitutional amendments be unconstitutional? Using theoretical and comparative approaches, Roznai establishes the nature and scope of constitutional amendment powers by focusing on substantive limitations, looking at their prevalence in practice and the conceptual coherence of the very idea of limitations to constitutional amendment powers.
Download or read book A Century of Constitutional Reform written by Philip Norton and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2011-02-21 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Century of Constitutional Reform is a detailed study of the introduction, passage and consequences of major constitutional legislation in the United Kingdom. The book covers legislation enacted since the passage of the Parliament Act 1911, with contributions from leading specialists. Examines in depth the legislation that has shaped the constitution of the United Kingdom since the passage of the Parliament Act 1911 Provides a systematic study of the reasons for the introduction of the measures, their passage through Parliament Discusses the effects of legislation and the extent to which the laws both achieved their purpose and their unintended consequences Each contribution is written by a specialist in the field
Download or read book Understanding State Constitutions written by G. Alan Tarr and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2000-09-25 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The distinctiveness of state constitutionalism -- Explaining state constitutional development -- Eighteenth-century state constitutionalism -- Nineteenth-century state constitutionalism -- Twentieth-century state constitutionalism -- State constitutional interpretation.
Download or read book Constitutional Reform written by Rodney Brazier and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1998 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of Constitutional Reform examines central government, Parliament, and the judiciary in Britain and proposes an agenda for reform. The stress remains on suggestions which might stand a fair chance of being implemented. Topics covered include the limitations on the scope forconstitutional reform; new methodology for constitutional change; parliamentary democracy and voting reform; the second chamber; the reduction of ministerial power; the transfer of certain royal powers to Parliament; and the reform of the judiciary.Also including a new chapter on the Labour Government's plans for the British constitution, this book provides the reader with comprehensive coverage of constitutional change in Britain at the new millennium.
Download or read book Icelandic Constitutional Reform written by Ágúst Þór Árnason and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection documents, analyses, and reflects on the Icelandic constitutional reform between 2009 and 2017. It offers a unique insight into this process by providing first-hand accounts of its different stages and core issues. Its 12 substantive chapters are written by the main actors in the reform, including the Chair of the Constitutional Council that drafted the 2011 Proposal for a New Constitution. Part I opens with an address by the President of the Republic and positions the constitutional reform in its full complexity and longer-term perspective, going beyond the frequent portrayal of that process in international discussion as being solely a result of the 2008 financial crisis. Part II offers a nuanced and contextualised reflection on Iceland’s innovative approach to consultation and drafting involving lay participants, including its twenty-first-century digital take on ‘the people,’ which attracted international attention as ‘crowdsourcing.’ Part III analyses the main constitutional amendment proposals, and focuses on natural resources and environmental protection, which lie at the heart of Iceland’s identity. The final part reflects on the reform’s wider significance and includes an interview with the current Prime Minister, who is now taking the reform forward. The volume provides a basis for reflection on a groundbreaking constitutional reform in a democratic context. This long and complex process has challenged and transformed the ways in which constitutional change can be approached, and the collection is an invitation to discuss further the practical and theoretical dimensions of Iceland’s experience and their far-reaching implications.
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 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 Constitutional Reform in Britain and France written by Elizabeth Gibson-Morgan and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Any attempt at comparing contemporary change in the UK and France is a bold one, since it means discussing two very different countries with strong distinctive constitutional identities. This book places its emphasis on the shared historical, political and cultural background of the UK and France, before focusing on the sweeping transformation of their constitutional frameworks in the past quarter of a century at a national and regional level – with a particular emphasis on Wales and Scotland – which culminated in the June 2016 referendum on Britain’s EU membership. Instead of examining each country separately, however, as is traditional, this study breaks new ground by explaining the pattern of institutional development in Britain and France from a comparative Franco-British perspective. It explores the complexities of recent constitutional change in both countries in an original and comprehensive way, and gives both British and French readers a deeper understanding of the two countries that have some much in common even though Brexit could drive them apart.
Download or read book Perfecting Parliament written by Roger D. Congleton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 669 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains why contemporary liberal democracies are based on historical templates rather than revolutionary reforms; why the transition in Europe occurred during a relatively short period in the nineteenth century; why politically and economically powerful men and women voluntarily supported such reforms; how interests, ideas, and pre-existing institutions affected the reforms adopted; and why the countries that liberalized their political systems also produced the Industrial Revolution. The analysis is organized in three parts. The first part develops new rational choice models of (1) governance, (2) the balance of authority between parliaments and kings, (3) constitutional exchange, and (4) suffrage reform. The second part provides historical overviews and detailed constitutional histories of six important countries. The third part provides additional evidence in support of the theory, summarizes the results, contrasts the approach taken in this book with that of other scholars, and discusses methodological issues.
Download or read book Our Undemocratic Constitution written by Sanford Levinson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Levinson here argues that too many of our Constitution's provisions promote either unjust or ineffective government. Under the existing blueprint, we can neither rid ourselves of incompetent presidents nor assure continuity of government following catastrophic attacks. Worse, our Constitution is the most difficult to amend or update in the world. Levinson boldly challenges the Americans to undertake a long overdue public discussion on how they might best reform this most hallowed document and construct a constitution adequate to our democratic values.
Download or read book Broken Trust written by Stephen M. Griffin and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2015-08-21 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Variously and roundly perceived as gridlocked, incompetent, irresponsible, and corrupt, American government commands less respect and trust today than perhaps at any time in the nation's history. But the dysfunction in government that we like so little, along with the policy disasters it engenders, is in fact a product of that deep and persistent distrust, Stephen M. Griffin contends in Broken Trust, an accessible work of constitutional theory and history with profound implications for our troubled political system. Undertaken with a deep concern about the way our government is performing, Broken Trust makes use of the debate over dysfunctional government to uncover significant flaws in the conventional wisdom as to how the Constitution works. Indeed, although Americans strongly believe that our government is dysfunctional, they are just as firmly convinced that the Constitution still works well. Griffin questions this conviction by examining how recent policy disasters—such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the response to Hurricane Katrina, and the 2008 financial crisis—are linked to our constitutional system. This leads him to pose the question of whether the government institutions we have inherited from the eighteenth century are poor fits for contemporary times. Griffin argues that understanding the decline of trust in government requires investigating the historical circumstances of the last several decades as well as the constitutional experience of the states. In particular, he examines “hybrid democracy,” the form of constitutionalism prevailing in California and other western states that combines Madisonian-style representative government with direct democracy. Hybrid democracy offers valuable lessons relevant to our contemporary difficulties with dysfunctional government at the national level. These lessons underpin the agenda for reform that Griffin then proposes, emphasizing democratic innovations aimed at producing both more effective government and greater trust in our political institutions. Building on a better understanding of the sources and consequences of government dysfunction, his book holds genuine hope, as well as practical possibilities, for the repair of our broken political and constitutional system.
