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The Magna Carta Manifesto
This remarkable book shines a fierce light on the current state of liberty and shows how longstanding restraints against tyranny—and the rights of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and due process of law, and the prohibition of torture—are being abridged. In providing a sweeping history of Magna Carta, the source of these protections since 1215, this powerful book demonstrates how these ancient rights are repeatedly laid aside when the greed of privatization, the lust for power, and the ambition of empire seize a state. Peter Linebaugh draws on primary sources to construct a wholly original history of the Great Charter and its scarcely-known companion, the Charter of the Forest, which was created at the same time to protect the subsistence rights of the poor.
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Political Thought and the Origins of the American Presidency
This volume examines the political ideas behind the construction
of the presidency in the U.S. Constitution, as well as how these
ideas were implemented by the nation's early presidents. The
framers of the Constitution disagreed about the scope of the new
executive role they were creating, and this volume reveals the ways
the duties and power of the office developed contrary to many
expectations.
Here, leading scholars of the early republic examine principles
from European thought and culture that were key to establishing the
conceptual language and institutional parameters for the American
executive office. Unpacking the debates at the 1787 Constitutional
Convention, these essays describe how the Constitution left room
for the first presidents to set patterns of behavior and establish
a range of duties to make the office functional within a
governmental system of checks and balances. Contributors explore
how these presidents understood their positions and fleshed out
their full responsibilities according to the everyday operations
required to succeed.
As disputes continue to surround the limits of executive power
today, this volume helps identify and explain the circumstances in
which limits can be imposed on presidents who seem to dangerously
exceed the constitutional parameters of their office. Political
Thought and the Origins of the American Presidency
demonstrates that this distinctive, time-tested role developed from
a fraught, historically contingent, and contested process.
Contributors: Claire Rydell Arcenas | Lindsay
M. Chervinsky | François Furstenberg | Jonathan Gienapp | Daniel J.
Hulsebosch | Ben Lowe | Max Skjönsberg | Eric Slauter | Caroline
Winterer | Blair Worden | Rosemarie Zagarri
A volume in the Alan B. and Charna Larkin Series on the American
Presidency
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Great exit projects on the US Constitution
The U.S. Constitution is one of the most important documents in the world, if not the most important document in the history of the United States. It spells out citizens' rights, and there is still much debate today about its interpretation in the legislative process of the United States. In this resource, readers will examine the U.S. Constitution and the rights it affords American citizens through project-based learning.
Book
Outside the law : emergency and executive power
The origins of presidential claims to extraconstitutional powers during national crises are contentious points of debate among constitutional and legal scholars. The Constitution is silent on the matter, yet from Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War to George W. Bush's creation of the \"enemy combatants\" label, a number of presidents have invoked emergency executive power in defense of actions not specifically endorsed in the Constitution or granted by Congress. Taking up the debate, Clement Fatovic digs into the intellectual history of the nation's founding to argue that the originators of liberal constitutional theory explicitly endorsed the use of extraordinary, extralegal measures to deal with genuine national emergencies. He traces the evolution of thought on the matter through the writings of John Locke, David Hume, William Blackstone, and the founding fathers, finding in them stated support for what Locke termed \"prerogative,\" tempered by a carefully construed concept of public-oriented virtues. Fatovic maintains that the founders believed that moral character and republican decency would restrain the president from abusing this grant of enhanced authority and ensure that it remained temporary. This engaging, carefully considered survey of the conceptions of executive power in constitutional thought explains how liberalism's founders attempted to reconcile the principles of constitutional government with the fact that some circumstances would demand that an executive take normally proscribed actions. Scholars of liberalism, the American founding, and the American presidency will find Fatovic's reasoned arguments against the conventional wisdom enlightening.
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Act of Justice
In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln declared that as president he would \"have no lawful right\" to interfere with the institution of slavery. Yet less than two years later, he issued a proclamation intended to free all slaves throughout the Confederate states. When critics challenged the constitutional soundness of the act, Lincoln pointed to the international laws and usages of war as the legal basis for his Proclamation, asserting that the Constitution invested the president \"with the law of war in time of war.\" As the Civil War intensified, the Lincoln administration slowly and reluctantly accorded full belligerent rights to the Confederacy under the law of war. This included designating a prisoner of war status for captives, honoring flags of truce, and negotiating formal agreements for the exchange of prisoners -- practices that laid the intellectual foundations for emancipation. Once the United States allowed Confederates all the privileges of belligerents under international law, it followed that they should also suffer the disadvantages, including trial by military courts, seizure of property, and eventually the emancipation of slaves. Even after the Lincoln administration decided to apply the law of war, it was unclear whether state and federal courts would agree. After careful analysis, author Burrus M. Carnahan concludes that if the courts had decided that the proclamation was not justified, the result would have been the personal legal liability of thousands of Union officers to aggrieved slave owners. This argument offers further support to the notion that Lincoln's delay in issuing the Emancipation Proclamation was an exercise of political prudence, not a personal reluctance to free the slaves. In Act of Justice, Carnahan contends that Lincoln was no reluctant emancipator; he wrote a truly radical document that treated Confederate slaves as an oppressed people rather than merely as enemy property. In this respect, Lincoln's proclamation anticipated the psychological warfare tactics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Carnahan's exploration of the president's war powers illuminates the origins of early debates about war powers and the Constitution and their link to international law.
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The U.S. Constitution : a very short introduction
\"Though the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1788, its impact on our lives is as recent as today's news. Claims and counterclaims about the constitutionality of governmental actions are a habit of American politics. This document, which its framers designed to limit power, often has made political conflict inevitable. It also has accommodated and legitimized the political and social changes of a vibrant, powerful democratic nation. A product of history's first modern revolution, the Constitution embraced a new formula for government: it restrained power on behalf of liberty, but it also granted power to promote and protect liberty. The U.S. Constitution: A Very Short Introduction explores the major themes that have shaped American constitutional history: federalism, the balance of powers, property, representation, equality, rights, and security. Informed by the latest scholarship, this book places constitutional history within the context of American political and social history. As our nation's circumstances have changed, so has our Constitution. Today we face serious challenges to the nation's constitutional legacy. Endless wars, a sharply divided electorate, economic inequality, and immigration, along with a host of other issues, have placed demands on government and on society that test our constitutional values. Understanding how the Constitution has evolved will help us adapt its principles to the challenges of our age\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
American Constitutionalism Heard Round the World, 1776-1989
Winner of the 2010 Book Award from the New England Historical AssociationAmerican constitutionalism represents this country's greatest gift to human freedom, yet its story remains largely untold. For over two hundred years, its ideals, ideas, and institutions influenced different peoples in different lands at different times. American constitutionalism and the revolutionary republican documents on which it is based affected countless countries by helping them develop their own constitutional democracies. Western constitutionalism - of which America was a part along with Britain and France - reached a major turning point in global history in 1989, when the forces of democracy exceeded the forces of autocracy for the first time.Historian George Athan Billias traces the spread of American constitutionalism - from Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean region, to Asia and Africa - beginning chronologically with the American Revolution and the fateful \"shot heard round the world\" and ending with the conclusion of the Cold War in 1989. The American model contributed significantly by spearheading the drive to greater democracy throughout the Western world, and Billias's landmark study tells a story that will change the way readers view the important role American constitutionalism played during this era.
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