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In time for the 225th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, David Kyvig completed an Afterword to his landmark study of the process of amending the US Constitution. The Afterword discusses the many amendments, such those requiring a balanced federal budget or limiting the terms of members of Congress, that have been proposed since the book was originally published and why they failed of passage. At a time when prominent scholars and other public figures have called for a constitutional convention to write a new constitution, arguing that our current system of governance is unsustainable Kyvig reminds us of the high hurdles the founders created to amending the constitution and how they have served the country well, preventing the amendment process from being used by one faction to serve the passions of the moment. In his farewell address, President Washington reminded his audience that the Constitution, "till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all." He regarded the Constitution as a binding document worthy of devout allegiance, but also believed that it contains a clear and appropriate procedure for its own reform. David Kyvig's illuminating study provides the most complete and insightful history of that amendment process and its fundamental importance for American political life. Over the course of the past two centuries, more than 10,000 amendments have been proposed by the method stipulated in Article V of the Constitution. Amazingly, only 33 have garnered the required two-thirds approval from both houses of Congress, and only 27 were ultimately ratified into law by the states. Despite their small number, those amendments have revolutionized American government while simultaneously legitimizing and preserving its continued existence. Indeed, they have dramatically altered the relationship between state and federal authority, as well as between government and private citizens. Kyvig reexamines the creation and operation of Article V, illuminating the process and substance of each major successful and failed effort to change the formal structure, duties, and limits of the federal government. He analyzes in detail the Founders' intentions; the periods of great amendment activity during the 1790s, 1860s, 1910s, and 1960s; and the considerable consequences of amendment failure involving slavery, alcohol prohibition, child labor, New Deal programs, school prayer, equal rights for women, abortion, balanced budgets, term limits, and flag desecration.
How state constitutional reform guides and stabilizes American constitutional and political development State constitution reform guides and stabilizes American constitutional and political development. Using data sets and historical case studies, Robinson Woodward†‘Burns shows how the federal government has repeatedly deferred to state constitutional reform to manage or address difficult national constitutional controversies, including conflicts over the regulation of slavery, banking and taxation, women’s suffrage, labor and welfare rights, voting and civil rights, and gender discrimination.
This innovative book blends constitutional theory with real-life political practice to explore the impact of codifying constitutional amendments on the operation of the constitution in relation to democracy, the rule of law, and the separation of powers. It draws from comparative, historical, political and theoretical perspectives to answer questions all constitutional designers should ask themselves: - Should the constitution append amendments sequentially to the end of the text? - Should it embed amendments directly into the existing text, with notations about what has been modified and how? - Should it instead insert amendments into the text without indicating at all that any alteration has occurred? The book examines the 3 major models of amendment codification – the appendative, the integrative, and the invisible models – and also shows how some jurisdictions have innovated alternative forms of amendment codification that combine elements of more than 1 model in a unique hybridisation driven by history, law, and politics. Constitutional designers rarely consider where in the constitution to codify amendments once they are ratified. Yet this choice is pivotal to the operation of any constitution. This groundbreaking book shows why the placement of constitutional amendments goes well beyond mere aesthetics. It influences how and whether a people remembers its past, how the constitutional text will be interpreted and by whom, and whether the constitution will be easily accessible to the governed. A global tour of the high stakes of constitution-making, this book features 18 diverse and outstanding scholars from around the world – across Africa, America, Asia and Oceania, and Europe – raising new questions, opening our eyes to new streams of research, and uncovering new possibilities for constitutional design.
The word “prohibition” tends to conjure up images of smoky basement speakeasies, dancing flappers, and hardened gangsters bootlegging whiskey. Such stereotypes, a prominent historian recently noted in the Washington Post, confirm that Americans’ “common understanding of the prohibition era is based more on folklore than fact.” Popular culture has given us a very strong, and very wrong, picture of what the period was like. Prohibition’s Greatest Myths: The Distilled Truth about America’s Anti-Alcohol Crusade aims to correct common misperceptions with ten essays by scholars who have spent their careers studying different aspects of the era. Each contributor unravels one myth, revealing the historical evidence that supports, complicates, or refutes our long-held beliefs about the Eighteenth Amendment. H. Paul Thompson Jr., Joe L. Coker, Lisa M. F. Andersen, and Ann Marie E. Szymanski examine the political and religious factors in early twentieth-century America that led to the push for prohibition, including the temperance movement, the influences of religious conservatism and liberalism, the legislation of individual behavior, and the lingering effects of World War I. From there, several contributors analyze how the laws of prohibition were enforced. Michael Lewis discredits the idea that alcohol consumption increased during the era, while Richard F. Hamm clarifies the connections between prohibition and organized crime, and Thomas R. Pegram demonstrates that issues other than the failure of prohibition contributed to the amendment’s repeal. Finally, contributors turn to prohibition’s legacy. Mark Lawrence Schrad, Garrett Peck, and Bob L. Beach discuss the reach of prohibition beyond the United States, the influence of anti-alcohol legislation on Americans’ longterm drinking habits, and efforts to link prohibition with today’s debates over the legalization of marijuana. Together, these essays debunk many of the myths surrounding “the Noble Experiment,” not only providing a more in-depth analysis of prohibition but also allowing readers to engage more meaningfully in contemporary debates about alcohol and drug policy.
Child labor law strikes most Americans as a fixture of the country’s legal landscape, involving issues settled in the distant past. But these laws, however self-evidently sensible they might seem, were the product of deeply divisive legal debates stretching over the past century—and even now are subject to constitutional challenges. Child Labor in America tells the story of that historic legal struggle. The book offers the first full account of child labor law in America—from the earliest state regulations to the most recent important Supreme Court decisions and the latest contemporary attacks on existing laws. Children had worked in America from the time the first settlers arrived on its shores, but public attitudes about working children underwent dramatic changes along with the nation’s economy and culture. A close look at the origins of oppressive child labor clarifies these changing attitudes, providing context for the hard-won legal reforms that followed. Author John A. Fliter describes early attempts to regulate working children, beginning with haphazard and flawed state-level efforts in the 1840s and continuing in limited and ineffective ways as a consensus about the evils of child labor started to build. In the Progressive Era, the issue finally became a matter of national concern, resulting in several laws, four major Supreme Court decisions, an unsuccessful Child Labor Amendment, and the landmark Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Fliter offers a detailed overview of these events, introducing key figures, interest groups, and government officials on both sides of the debates and incorporating the latest legal and political science research on child labor reform. Unprecedented in its scope and depth, his work provides critical insight into the role child labor has played in the nation’s social, political, and legal development.
Looks at how William Jennings Bryan's attempts to reach the White House invigorated conservatives across the United States and changed approaches to constitutional law.
"This book will explore the political, economic, and social forces that generated such rapid changes in traditional understandings of the constitutional relationships between the federal and state governments and their citizens"--
"The United States is the only nation in the world in which political leaders, judges and soldiers all swear allegiance not to a king or a people but to a document, the Constitution. The Constitution today, however, is much revered but little read. . Readers of AMERICAN EPIC will never think of the Constitution in quite the same way again. Garrett Epps, a legal scholar who is also a journalist and writer of prize-winning fiction, takes readers on a literary tour of the Constitution, finding in it much that is interesting, puzzling, praiseworthy, and sometimes hilarious. Reading the Constitution like a literary work yields a host of meanings that shed new light on what it means to be an American"--