Constitutional Redemption PDF Download

Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Constitutional Redemption PDF full book. Access full book title Constitutional Redemption by J. M. Balkin. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.

Constitutional Redemption

Constitutional Redemption PDF Author: J. M. Balkin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674058747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
Political constitutions are compromises with injustice. What makes the U.S. Constitution legitimate is Americans’ faith that the constitutional system can be made “a more perfect union.” Balkin argues that the American constitutional project is based in hope and a narrative of shared redemption, and its destiny is still over the horizon.

Constitutional Redemption

Constitutional Redemption PDF Author: J. M. Balkin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674058747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
Political constitutions are compromises with injustice. What makes the U.S. Constitution legitimate is Americans’ faith that the constitutional system can be made “a more perfect union.” Balkin argues that the American constitutional project is based in hope and a narrative of shared redemption, and its destiny is still over the horizon.

Framing the Solid South

Framing the Solid South PDF Author: Paul E. Herron
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700624376
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Book Description
The South was not always the South. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, those below the Potomac River, for all their cultural and economic similarities, did not hold a separate political identity. How this changed, and how the South came to be a political entity that coheres to this day, emerges clearly in this book—the first comprehensive account of the Civil War Era and late nineteenth century state constitutional conventions that forever transformed southern politics. From 1860 to the turn of the twentieth century, southerners in eleven states gathered forty-four times to revise their constitutions. Framing the Solid South traces the consolidation of the southern states through these conventions in three waves of development: Secession, Reconstruction, and Redemption. Secession conventions, Paul Herron finds, did much more than dissolve the Union; they acted in concert to raise armies, write law, elect delegates to write a Confederate Constitution, ratify that constitution, and rewrite state constitutions. During Reconstruction, the national government forced the southern states to write and rewrite constitutions to permit re-entry into the Union—recognizing federal supremacy, granting voting rights to African Americans, enshrining a right to public education, and opening the political system to broader participation. Black southerners were essential participants in democratizing the region and reconsidering the nature of federalism in light of the devastation brought by proponents of states’ rights and sovereignty. Many of the changes by the postwar conventions, Herron shows, were undermined if not outright abolished in the following period, as “Redeemers” enshrined a system of weak states, the rule of a white elite, and the suppression of black rights. Southern constitution makers in all three waves were connected to each other and to previous conventions unlike any others in American history. These connections affected the content of the fundamental law and political development in the region. Southern politics, to an unusual degree, has been a product of the process Herron traces. What his book tells us about these constitutional conventions and the documents they produced is key to understanding southern history and the South today.

Living Originalism

Living Originalism PDF Author: Jack M. Balkin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674063031
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 481

Book Description
Originalism and living constitutionalism, so often understood to be diametrically opposing views of our nation’s founding document, are not in conflict—they are compatible. So argues Jack Balkin, one of the leading constitutional scholars of our time, in this long-awaited book. Step by step, Balkin gracefully outlines a constitutional theory that demonstrates why modern conceptions of civil rights and civil liberties, and the modern state’s protection of national security, health, safety, and the environment, are fully consistent with the Constitution’s original meaning. And he shows how both liberals and conservatives, working through political parties and social movements, play important roles in the ongoing project of constitutional construction. By making firm rules but also deliberately incorporating flexible standards and abstract principles, the Constitution’s authors constructed a framework for politics on which later generations could build. Americans have taken up this task, producing institutions and doctrines that flesh out the Constitution’s text and principles. Balkin’s analysis offers a way past the angry polemics of our era, a deepened understanding of the Constitution that is at once originalist and living constitutionalist, and a vision that allows all Americans to reclaim the Constitution as their own.

Redeeming American Democracy

Redeeming American Democracy PDF Author: Marshall L. DeRosa
Publisher: Pelican Publishing
ISBN: 9781589804722
Category : Constitutional law
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
How to bring the power back to the people be decentralization. The warring ideas of centralization and decentralization are at the core of modern political debates about the national economy, U.S. foreign policy, and citizens' cultural values-just as they were among our Founding Fathers. With the election of Abraham Lincoln, the concept and practice of centralization in U.S. government gained power. In contrast, the Confederate constitution carried decentralization even further than the original Constitution and added a number of features that could stand us in good stead in this time of big government and excessive rules.

Conservatives and the Constitution

Conservatives and the Constitution PDF Author: Ken I. Kersch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521193109
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 431

Book Description
Recovers a contested, evolving tradition of conservative constitutional argument that shaped the past and is bidding to make the future.

The Upside-Down Constitution

The Upside-Down Constitution PDF Author: Michael S. Greve
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674061910
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Over the course of the nation’s history, the Constitution has been turned upside-down, Michael Greve argues in this provocative book. The Constitution’s vision of a federalism in which local, state, and federal government compete to satisfy the preferences of individuals has given way to a cooperative, cartelized federalism that enables interest groups to leverage power at every level for their own benefit. Greve traces this inversion from the Constitution’s founding through today, dispelling much received wisdom along the way. The Upside-Down Constitution shows how federalism’s transformation was a response to states’ demands, not an imposition on them. From the nineteenth-century judicial elaboration of a competitive federal order, to the New Deal transformation, to the contemporary Supreme Court’s impoverished understanding of constitutional structure, and the “devolution” in vogue today, Greve describes a trend that will lead to more government and fiscal profligacy, not less. Taking aim at both the progressive heirs of the New Deal and the vocal originalists of our own time, The Upside-Down Constitution explains why the current fiscal crisis will soon compel a fundamental renegotiation of a new federalism grounded in constitutional principles.

The Cycles of Constitutional Time

The Cycles of Constitutional Time PDF Author: Jack M. Balkin
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0197530990
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
"America's constitutional system evolves through the interplay between three cycles: the rise and fall of dominant political parties, the waxing and waning of political polarization, and alternating episodes of constitutional rot and constitutional renewal. America's politics seems especially fraught today because we are nearing the end of the Republican Party's long political dominance, at the height of a long cycle of political polarization, and suffering from an advanced case of "constitutional rot." Constitutional rot is the historical process through which republics become increasingly less representative and less devoted to the common good. Caused by increasing economic inequality and loss of trust, constitutional rot seriously threatens the constitutional system. But America has been through these cycles before, and will get through them again. America is in a Second Gilded Age slowly moving toward a second Progressive Era, during which polarization will eventually recede. The same cycles shape the work of the federal courts and theories about constitutional interpretation. They explain why political parties have switched sides on judicial review not once but twice in the twentieth century. Polarization and constitutional rot alter the political supports for judicial review, make fights over judicial appointments especially bitter, and encourage constitutional hardball. The Constitution ordinarily relies on the judiciary to protect democracy and to prevent political corruption and self-entrenching behavior. But when constitutional rot is advanced, the Supreme Court is likely to be ineffective and may even make matters worse. Courts cannot save the country from constitutional rot; only political mobilization can"--

Law and Leviathan

Law and Leviathan PDF Author: Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674247531
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
From two legal luminaries, a highly original framework for restoring confidence in a government bureaucracy increasingly derided as “the deep state.” Is the modern administrative state illegitimate? Unconstitutional? Unaccountable? Dangerous? Intolerable? American public law has long been riven by a persistent, serious conflict, a kind of low-grade cold war, over these questions. Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule argue that the administrative state can be redeemed, as long as public officials are constrained by what they call the morality of administrative law. Law and Leviathan elaborates a number of principles that underlie this moral regime. Officials who respect that morality never fail to make rules in the first place. They ensure transparency, so that people are made aware of the rules with which they must comply. They never abuse retroactivity, so that people can rely on current rules, which are not under constant threat of change. They make rules that are understandable and avoid issuing rules that contradict each other. These principles may seem simple, but they have a great deal of power. Already, without explicit enunciation, they limit the activities of administrative agencies every day. But we can aspire for better. In more robust form, these principles could address many of the concerns that have critics of the administrative state mourning what they see as the demise of the rule of law. The bureaucratic Leviathan may be an inescapable reality of complex modern democracies, but Sunstein and Vermeule show how we can at last make peace between those who accept its necessity and those who yearn for its downfall.

Redemption from Tyranny

Redemption from Tyranny PDF Author: Bruce E. Stewart
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 081394371X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
For many common people, the American Revolution offered an opportunity to radically reimagine the wealth and power structures in the nascent United States. Yet in the eyes of working-class activists, the U.S. Constitution favored the interests of a corrupt elite and betrayed the lofty principles of the Declaration of Independence. The discontent of these ordinary revolutionaries sparked a series of protest movements throughout the country during the 1780s and 1790s. Redemption from Tyranny explores the life of a leader among these revolutionaries. A farmer, evangelical, and political activist, Herman Husband (1724-1795) played a crucial role in some of the most important anti-establishment movements in eighteenth-century America--the Great Awakening, the North Carolina Regulation, the American Revolution, and the Whiskey Rebellion. Husband became a famous radical, advocating for the reduction of economic inequality among white men. Drawing on a wealth of newly unearthed resources, Stewart uses the life of Husband to explore the varied reasons behind the rise of economic populism and its impact on society during the long American Revolution. Husband offers a valuable lens through which we can view how "labouring, industrious people" shaped--and were shaped by--the American Revolution.

Red River Valley

Red River Valley PDF Author: Patrick G. Williams
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603444890
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Book Description
Though Lyndon Johnson developed a reputation as a rough-hewn, arm-twisting deal-maker with a drawl, at a crucial moment in history he delivered an address to Congress that moved Martin Luther King Jr. to tears and earned praise from the media as the best presidential speech in American history. Even today, his voting rights address of 1965 ranks high not only in political significance, but also as an example of leadership through oratory.