We the People, Volume 2: Transformations / Edition 1

We the People, Volume 2: Transformations / Edition 1

by Bruce Ackerman
ISBN-10:
0674003977
ISBN-13:
9780674003972
Pub. Date:
09/15/2000
Publisher:
Harvard University Press
ISBN-10:
0674003977
ISBN-13:
9780674003972
Pub. Date:
09/15/2000
Publisher:
Harvard University Press
We the People, Volume 2: Transformations / Edition 1

We the People, Volume 2: Transformations / Edition 1

by Bruce Ackerman
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Overview

Constitutional change, seemingly so orderly, formal, and refined, has in fact been a revolutionary process from the first, as Bruce Ackerman makes clear in We the People: Transformations. The Founding Fathers, hardly the genteel conservatives of myth, set America on a remarkable course of revolutionary disruption and constitutional creativity that endures to this day. After the bloody sacrifices of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party revolutionized the traditional system of constitutional amendment as they put principles of liberty and equality into higher law. Another wrenching transformation occurred during the Great Depression, when Franklin Roosevelt and his New Dealers vindicated a new vision of activist government against an assault by the Supreme Court.

These are the crucial episodes in American constitutional history that Ackerman takes up in this second volume of a trilogy hailed as "one of the most important contributions to American constitutional thought in the last half-century" (Cass Sunstein, New Republic). In each case he shows how the American people—whether led by the Founding Federalists or the Lincoln Republicans or the Roosevelt Democrats—have confronted the Constitution in its moments of great crisis with dramatic acts of upheaval, always in the name of popular sovereignty. A thoroughly new way of understanding constitutional development, We the People: Transformations reveals how America's "dualist democracy" provides for these populist upheavals that amend the Constitution, often without formalities.

The book also sets contemporary events, such as the Reagan Revolution and Roe v. Wade, in deeper constitutional perspective. In this context Ackerman exposes basic constitutional problems inherited from the New Deal Revolution and exacerbated by the Reagan Revolution, then considers the fundamental reforms that might resolve them. A bold challenge to formalist and fundamentalist views, this volume demonstrates that ongoing struggle over America's national identity, rather than consensus, marks its constitutional history.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780674003972
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication date: 09/15/2000
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 538
Product dimensions: 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.25(d)

About the Author

Bruce Ackerman is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University and the award-winning author of eighteen books, including Social Justice in the Liberal State and his multivolume constitutional history We the People. His book The Stakeholder Society (written with Anne Alstott) served as a basis for Tony Blair’s introduction of child investment accounts in the United Kingdom. He contributes frequently to the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Ackerman is a member of the American Law Institute and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of the American Philosophical Society’s Henry M. Phillips Prize for lifetime achievement in jurisprudence.

Table of Contents

  • Acknowledgments



    Part 1: In the Beginning
  1. Higher Lawmaking
  2. Reframing the Founding
  3. The Founding Precedent

  4. Part 2: Reconstruction
  5. Formalist Dilemmas
  6. Presidential Leadership
  7. The Convention/Congress
  8. Interpreting the Mandate
  9. The Great Transformation

  10. Part 3: Modernity
  11. From Reconstruction to New Deal
  12. Rethinking the New Deal
  13. The Missing Amendments
  14. Rediscovery or Creation?
  15. Reclaiming the Constitution

  • Frequently Cited Works
  • Notes
  • Index

What People are Saying About This

This is a superb, provocative, and often gripping account of how We the People mobilize to produce constitutional change. A wonderful blend of history, political science, and constitutional law, this volume attempts to vindicate Ackerman's striking claim that the Civil War and the New Deal inaugurated large-scale constitutional transformations.

Cass Sunstein

This is a superb, provocative, and often gripping account of how We the People mobilize to produce constitutional change. A wonderful blend of history, political science, and constitutional law, this volume attempts to vindicate Ackerman's striking claim that the Civil War and the New Deal inaugurated large-scale constitutional transformations.
Cass Sunstein, University of Chicago Law School

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