Liberty, Property, and the Foundations of the American Constitution

Liberty, Property, and the Foundations of the American Constitution
Author: Ellen Frankel Paul
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 200
Release: 1989-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780887069154

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Cover title: Liberty, property & the foundations of the American constitution. Includes bibliographies and index.

The Classical Foundations of the American Constitution

The Classical Foundations of the American Constitution
Author: David J. Bederman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011-02-17
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780521187619

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The Framers of the American Constitution were substantially influenced by ancient history and classical political theory, as exemplified by their education, the availability of classical readings, and their inculcation in classical republican values. This volume explores how the Framing generation deployed classical learning to develop many of the essential structural aspects of the Constitution: federalism, separation of powers, a bicameral legislature, independent courts, and the war and foreign relations powers. Also examined are very contemporary constitutional debates, for which there were classical inspirations, including sovereign immunity, executive privilege, line-item vetoes, and the electoral college. Combining techniques of intellectual history, classical studies, and constitutional interpretation, this book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of contemporary constitutionalism.

Foundations of American Constitutionalism

Foundations of American Constitutionalism
Author: David A. J. Richards
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1989-12-14
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0195363116

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In writing the constitution, the Founders combined a Lockean theory of politically legitimate power with the political science they had learned from Machiavelli, Harrington, Hume, and Montesquieu to articulate a new conception of constitutional argument. Examining the Founders' humanist analytical methods and working assumptions, this book combines history, political philosophy, and interpretive practice as it demonstrates an alternative exegesis of the Constitution. It clarifies a wide range of interpretive issues of federalism, enumerated rights (religious liberty and free speech), unenumerated rights (the constitutional right to privacy), and equal protection.

The Foundations of American Citizenship

The Foundations of American Citizenship
Author: Richard C. Sinopoli
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 1992-04-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0195361318

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This study of exemplary writings from the debates over the ratification of the 1787 Constitution deals with the American constitutional founders' understandings of citizenship and civic virtue. Discussion of these debates is set in an analytical and historical context, addressing the rationales for and the nature of civic allegiance in liberal political regimes. Sinopoli analyzes the development of a distinctly liberal political psychology from its origins in John Locke, Adam Smith, and David Hume through the American founding and traces its implications for the current American polity.

"The Federalist" and the Classical Foundations of the American Republic

Author: Christopher Broschart
Publisher:
Total Pages: 67
Release: 2013
Genre: Federalist
ISBN:

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This paper examines the classical themes and ancient historical examples presented through the Federalist Papers of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. The Federalist Papers represent a lucid sample of early American political theory, and the ideologies of three prominent founders. The study focuses on the Greco-Roman states within those essays that were deemed analogous or relevant to the American Confederacy under the Articles of Confederation, or were used to promote a new federal union under the Constitution. This paper also analyzes the formation of mixed governance constitutions, a vital construction for the creation of modern nations, as the idea progressed through the classical writers Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero. Through this analysis, the influences of the Greek and Roman classics are shown to be a formative element in the formation of the American Republic. By reestablishing and reasserting the Classics into the political ideology of that time, insight into the creation of a new Constitution through the combined insight of the Federalist becomes readily apparent. The first section presents an introduction to the Federalist, and the ratification debates of 1787-88. Section two covers the classical influences to American history. The third section is a brief overview of five current works relating to this scholarship. Section four comprises the analysis of the five sections of the Federalist Papers as outlined by Alexander Hamilton. The final section of this paper investigates the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Polybius and Cicero to discover the evolution and creation of theories of mixed constitutions.

The Fallacies of States' Rights

The Fallacies of States' Rights
Author: Sotirios A. Barber
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2013-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0674067967

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Barber shows how arguments for states’ rights from John C. Calhoun to the present offend common sense, logic, and bedrock constitutional principles. The Constitution is a charter of positive benefits, not a contract among separate sovereigns whose function is to protect people from the central government, when there are greater dangers to confront.

A Constitution in Full

A Constitution in Full
Author: Peter Augustine Lawler
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2019-05-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0700627812

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When political debates devolve, as they often do these days, into a contest between big-government progressivism and natural rights individualism, Americans tend to appeal to the “self-evident” truths inscribed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But Peter Lawler and Richard Reinsch remind us that these truths understood in the abstract are untethered from a prior, unwritten constitution presupposed by the Framers—one found in culture, customs, traditions, experiences, and beliefs. A Constitution in Full is Lawler and Reinsch’s attempt to return this critical context to US constitutionalism—to recover a political sense of individualism in relation to country, family, religious community, and nature. Power, the authors suggest, is a public trust, not a form of obedience to either majoritarian suppression of particular liberties or the endless rights-claims lodged by autonomous individuals against society. Instead, power is ordered to the demands of a shared political enterprise that emerges from man’s social nature. Building on political insights from Alexis de Tocqueville, Orestes Brownson, John Courtney Murray, and others Lawler and Reinsch seek to restore the relational person—the individual grounded in family, work, faith, and community—to a central place in our understanding of republican constitutionalism. Their work promotes the ongoing development of constitutional self-government rooted in our historical, legal, and religious foundations. The shared middle-class values that once united almost all Americans as well as any confidence in democratic deliberation or political liberty are rapidly atrophying. This book aims to rebuild this confidence by helping us think seriously about the complex interplay between political and economic liberties and the relational life of creatures and citizens.