Book Description
For over fifty years, UNDERSTANDING THE CONSTITUTION has helped students understand and interpret the document that outlines America's fundamental rules and government structures. Always current and concise, this textbook goes beyond generalities to discover the major constitutional issues of our times, a constantly evolving process.
Customer Reviews:
Not the book I would choose for a class text .......2006-08-26
This is a well thought-out text that offers good clean insight into the historical background of the Constitution. I, personally, enjoyed reading it. My students, however, glaze over on the first page. It is written as more of a historical narrative and offers none of the washed out "end of chapter" ammenitites that we have come to rely upon. No powerpoints, test banks, etc.... It is simply too much of a "chunky monkey" that puts the reader in the position of intensely reading the material and constructing complex notes. This is the text I wish my students would eagerly read and engage themselves in, but then there is reality. Verdict - for use as an undergratuate class text - no. For use as a personal research primer or graduate text - yes.
Poor Teacher.......2006-04-01
Simply put, this book does relatively little in the way of actually teaching anything. Its main strength lies in explaining the Constitution line by line with commentary and extensive historical backing. However, the book simply lays out a TON of commentary without actually teaching the student anything at all. There are no questions for thought until the very end of the chapter, and the commentary following the Constitution's lines are most often altogether devoid of subheadings for organizational benefit. It is a very plain text that will provide a lot of information, but in a relatively meaningless manner for many individuals. Moreover, the commentary is interminably boring in nature, and thus an appeal to the reader's sense cannot be hoped for.
Regarding the review above naming this book a left-wing propaganda volume, the reviewer should not be heeded as his comments are completely ignorant and without support. I am a conservative, and I find that this book is not a convoluted view of the Constitution's meaning and interpretation by the Supreme Court. It really makes a good attempt at remaining quite neutral politically while being fair to the development of the Constitution historically.
However, the ability of the book to actually imbue the reader with knowledge through means of teaching a subject is what I am concerned with reviewing. For the lack thereof, I give the book a low rating.
Don't buy this book.......2001-04-26
They removed my last review, maybe this one will make it. Don't buy this book. Its written by a pack of convoluted thinking leftist bedwetters. if you want a factual book about the U.S. Constitution buy one published by the Cato Institute.
Step by step clarification.......2000-12-05
This book is a wonderful resource for someone interested in learning about the constition. This book walks you through the constitution line by line explaining and giving examples from actual court cases along the way. It's a little bit old, but I think it's definitly worth reading as a first look at the constitution.
Book Description
Over the course of the last century, scholars have furiously debated four questions concerning the Founders and their act of creation. Were the Framers motivated by their economic interests? How democratic was the Framers' Constitution? Should we interpret the Founding using philosophical or strictly historical approaches? What traditions of political thought were most important to the Framers?
In Understanding the Founding: The Crucial Questions, Alan Gibson examines the preconceptions that scholars bring to these questions, explores the deepest sources of scholars' disagreements over them, and suggests new and thoughtful lines of interpretation and inquiry. Building on his previous work, Interpreting the Founding, which offers a synoptic overview of the competing perspectives that have informed modern scholarship on the Founders, Gibson now examines this same century of scholarship from the standpoint of the most important debates that it has generated.
In evaluating the economic interpretation of the Constitution, Gibson establishes what has and has not been proven about the economic and social characteristics of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists and makes suggestions for future research. Gibson's analysis of the character of the original Constitution sets forth a complex and judicious view of the Framers' intentions regarding democracy, arguing that scholars have often disagreed, not because they have vastly different understandings of the Framers' aims, but because they differ among them-selves about how to define democracy. In examining the controversy over interpretive approaches, Gibson suggests a new synthesis of the insights of linguistic contextualists and philosophical rationalists; and in revisiting the liberalism-versus-republicanism debate, he analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of alternative accounts of the interactions of multiple traditions in the political thought of the Founders.
Gibson's incisive analysis brings clarity to these complex and sprawling debates and sheds new light on the institutional and intellectual foundations of the American political system. Urging us to move forward from a puerile affection for the Founders to a deeper understanding of their place in the history of political thought and a more balanced assessment of the strengths and limitations of the system that they founded, he also provides a provocative view of the proper role of the Founders' ideas today.
This book is part of the American Political Thought series.
Customer Reviews:
A very fine summation of the current knowledge........2007-05-21
This slender and very concise (194 pages of text, 75+ pages of notes) is a follow-up to Prof. Gibson's fine first book, Interpreting the Founding. In that volume (see my review), Gibson outlined the historigraphical debates about the founding American period (which I define as late 1760s to 1800).
In this book, he goes more to the heart of the subject itself. Gibson's project in these two books is two-fold: What is the best analytical framework to use in examining the founding generation? What can we say that we now know of them after the last fifty years of (often brilliant) historical work? Another way to state this is to say that his project is to point out future directions for research to answer the questions that past work has defined.
Before I discuss his work, I want to baldly state his main conclusion:
Gibson believes that the founders were deontological liberals. They believed that the protection of rights was the central role of government.
They did not believe that government should try to change or form the character of the people.
He centers his discussion around four basic questions or debates. Each of these controversies is covered in his chapters 1 thru 4.
The first is the validity of Beard's thesis of the economic interpretation of the Constitution. In many ways this is the least interesting chapter simply because the necessary data is so incomplete or so seems to point every which way. Let me give you one of my own examples of the latter. Gibson discusses Robert McGuire's fine statistical work on what we know about the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Gibson states that "McGuire's most important claim...is his proposition that slave-holding made a delegate much less likely to favor a national negative on state laws..."(p. 40). The irony of course is that that national negative was proposed in Resolution 6 of the Virginia Plan, written by one slaveowner and proposed to the Convention by another.
But Gibson's main point is how little we know about the financial holdings not only of the delegates to the Federal Convention, but about the financial holdings of the 1648 delegates to the state ratifying conventions, let alone of the ~160,000 voters who voted in the elections that produced the delegates to the state conventions (p.42) The kind of data required is unlikely to be ever found because it is simply unlikely to ever had existed. Nevertheless, Gibson's summation of the debate leads him to several conclusions. I will quote just one:
"Beard's proposition that the movement for the Constitution was begun by an elite group of men who were disproportionately wealthy, urban, and commercial in their interests, and that they were responding to threats to their economic interests from within the states...is no longer a source of controversy"(p.45)
The second chapter looks at recent debates about how democratic is the Constitution. I loved this chapter because it illustrates the difficulties with a contemporary tendency to place the Founders in the middle of current debates.
The Founders did not regard democracy as a paramount value. In Gibson's words, they "...did not assume that democratic government was good government"(p. 88). Thus we should not be surprised that what they created was not very inclusive nor democratic.
Secondly, there is a tendency to confuse the effects of federalism with anti-democracy. Consider the Senate. Each state has two senators. At the 2000 census, California had ~33,800,000 people. Wyoming has just under 500,000. So you could argue that each Californian senator represents some 15,000,000 people while each Wyoming senator represents 250,000. The difference is a 60-1 ratio. Seems pretty undemocratic depending on how you define "democracy". But the whole point of the Senate was to represents the states qua states; as a corporate political entity. Senators represent their state, not its people.
The final three chapters of Gibson's books I see as being of a piece. In chapter 3 he looks as the historical methodologies of the linguistic contextualists (Pocock, Woods, Skinner) and critiques that methodology from the point of view of those who advocate an "enduring question" approach (some examples of the latter would be Rahe or Zuckert). In chapter 4, Gibson is looking at the compromise that eventually came out of these debates- the multi-tradtion approach. The questions explored by this chapter are what traditions should be included? Is there a core tradition to which the others are adapted?
Gibson's conclusion in these two chapters form the analytical framework that he is suggesting for several future areas of research.
He comes down mostly on the side of those who propose the enduring question approach. Gibson feels that we are to some degree linguistically or culturally constructed but nowhere near to the degree suggested by Skinner, Woods, and Pocock. For these writers even explaining cultural innovation becomes a theoretical difficulty. Gibson (and Rahe and many others) point out that we have no evidence that individuals are that imprisioned by their cultural and linguistic heritage.
Gibson then argues for a multi-tradtion approach that takes the core work of Michael Zuckert and confronts it with the challenge of Rogers Smith work. Zuckert believes that Lockean liberalism is the core tradition of our political founding and that adapted to that core were ideas or means taken from the Portestant tradtion, the English Whig tradition and civic republicanism. But Locke is the key. But Rogers Smith's work can be seen as a challange to that conclusion. Smith believes there are actual intellectual traditions of ascriptive inequality (towards foreigners, women, Black-, Hispanic- and Asian-Americans) that have been used throughout our history to justify the exclusion of those groups from civil and political rights. Can we really say with Zuckert that the core of our political founding is a natural rights philosophy if Smith is right?
Gibson is very impressed by both of these authors (as am I) and wants to work toward exploring the tensions in their interpretations as well as to answer conundrums like the following: The Founders "...did not believe that it was the function of government to promote virtue among the citizens or to foster a particular conception of the good life" (p.157) Yet they believed that such virtue was necessary for the republican government to survive. So how was this virtue to be promoted by the civil society? By church? By schools? By the economic structure of society (Jefferson's nation of yeoman farmers)?
I could go on about this book far longer than I already have. Gibson states the issues so well in so many debates that it really is a spur to further research and reflection even for us amateur readers in the period.
I will leave the summary of chapter five (the lessons of the period for contemporary politics) to your own reading and reflection. I hope I have given you some idea of how impressive both of Prof. Gibson's books are. I recommend them to anyone interested in the period. Anybody who wants to discuss them with me, please feel free to email me or to make comments.
Book Description
For many Americans, the word "constitution" means just one thing: the national Constitution. According to a recent survey, almost half do not know that individual states also have constitutions. Scholars have also paid little attention to state constitutions, favoring the apparently more dynamic and significant federal scene. G. Alan Tarr seeks to change that in this landmark book. A leading authority on state legal issues, he combines history, law, and political science to present a thorough and long-needed account of the distinct and important role of state constitutions in American life.
Tarr shows that state constitutional politics are dominated by three crucial issues with little salience at the national level: the distribution of power among groups and regions within states, the scope of state and local governmental authority, and the relation of the state to economic activity. He explains how state constitutions differ from the national Constitution in treating not only matters of high principle but also such mundane subjects as ski trails and motor vehicle revenues. He also explores why state constitutions, unlike their federal counterpart, have been so frequently amended and replaced. Tarr concludes that the United States not only has a system of dual constitutionalism but also has dual constitutional cultures.
Powerfully argued and meticulously researched, the book fills an important gap in political and legal studies and finally gives state constitutions the scholarly attention they richly deserve.
Customer Reviews:
Very good introduction to state constitutions.......2005-12-20
A surprising number of people are unaware that their state has a constitution. I once had a friend who asked me if Rhode Island had a constitution, which shocked me since he was an intelligent law student who had lived in Rhode Island for years. When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalized gay marriage, many people asked me whether the US Supreme Court would reverse or uphold that decision and I had to explain why the US Court could not hear the case, to many confused looks. Tarr provides an excellent history of state constitutions through analysis of trends over each of the last three centuries. This analysis demonstrates that the standard dismissal of state constitutions because they embrace "legislation" rather than "great concepts" is illegitimate because state constitutions have had to adapt to different requirements and necessities than the federal constitution has had to deal with.
My only criticism is over Tarr's last chapter on interpretation. Like Tarr, I am also a firm believer that state courts need to interpret their state constitutions before turning to federal questions. However, Tarr errs in my opinion when he argues that state courts need to carefully examine other state constitutions and limit their analysis primarily to states where the provision at question was adopted from. This is a good lawyer's argument, but Tarr is a political scientist and political science has demonstrated that judges are policy actors. Thus, judges should be less concerned with whether their provision was taken from state X, then the actual policy lessons from any state that dealt with the issue before. A concrete example is education. Many state courts have attempted to strongly enforce their state right to education. However, many other state courts have looked at the policy problems this has lead to in states such as New Jersey and eschewed that same path without considering whether the wording or genesis of the provisions came from the same place. While I disagree with Tarr in this limited area, I think his book is the best introduction on state constitutions and would strongly recommend it to any new students of this area.
Book Description
For nearly 20 years, William Hubbs Rehnquist served as the 16th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During these two decades, the Court issued major decisions involving federalism, abortion, affirmative action, civil rights, privacy, and the 2000 presidential election. Throughout his tenure, Justice Rehnquist was conventionally perceived as a conservative, partly for the anti-civil rights memos he had written earlier in his career. He became a lightning rod for controversy during his confirmation hearings for Associate Justice in 1972, and again in 1986 when he became Chief Justice. Hudson's balanced, nonpartisan examination of the Rehnquist Court and its personalities shows that, surprisingly, Rehnquist's conservatism is quite mild compared to that of the "ideological purity" of Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, and that Rehnquist did an admirable job of playing moderator as Chief Justice, exhibiting sensitivity toward his colleagues.
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Inherent Rights, the Written Constitution, and Popular Sovereignty: The Founders' Understanding (Contributions in Legal Studies)
Thomas B. McAffee
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
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ASIN: 0313315078 |
Book Description
In recent decades the Ninth Amendment, a provision designed to clarify that the federal government was to be one of enumerated and limited powers, has been turned into an unenumerated rights clause that effectively grants unlimited power to the judiciary. Was this the intent of the framers of the Constitution? McAffee argues that the founders had a rather different set of priorities than ours, and that the goal of enforcing fundamental human rights was not why they drafted any of the first ten amendments. They did not intend to grant to the courts the power to generate fundamental rights, whether by reference to custom or history, reason or natural law, or societal values or consensus. It has become increasingly popular to identify our constitutional order as an experiment in the protection of fundamental human rights and to forget that it is also an experiment in self-government. As fundamental as the founding generation believed basic rights to be, they saw popular authority to make decisions about government as being even more central to the project in which they were engaged. They supported natural law and rights, but they felt strongly that those rights did not bind the people or their government unless they were inserted in the written Constitution. They did not contemplate that there would be unwritten limitations on the powers granted to government.
Customer Reviews:
Beautiful study of a wonderful subject........2007-09-14
This is a book that every American must read. Yes it does focus (is biased) toward "original intent". Why should we consider anyone's opinion of what the amendments should mean. That includes the opinions of some senile justice on the Supreme Court. What they believe the amendments should say is meaningless. The only important opinion is that of the founders, until the people change the meaning according to Constitutional procedure. If we don't like what it says, we can change it. But our politicians and judges can't do that arbitrarily. Just thought I would challenge the reviewer that prefers current interpretation over original intent.
A refreshing stroll through the amendments!!.......2002-08-21
This book is an amazing study. The book is ordered by amendment (or clause.) Within each part, the first essay focuses on the amendments original meaning and early history and the last essay focuses on the amendment today. Buyer beware. It seems that there is definitely a bias towards original meaning here, as each finishing essay comes to the conclusion that we've strayed from that original intent. But bias or not, can you blame them.
Of course that opens up an interesting dilemma that is unexplored in this book. Yes, we have strayed from original meaning (we've even FORGOTTEN the tenth amendments existence!) but this is only negative if you subscribe to 'original meaning' jurisprudence. As an aside, it seems most legal scholars and jurisprudential thinkers do not. Even Scalia and Posner, supposed conservatives, reject it; Scalia calling it 'the lesser evil.' This book assumes that readers share sympathy with original intent.
Where this book DOES prove its worth is in the attention payed to the fourth, fifth, ninth and tenth amendments- all of which are sadly neglected in legal dialogue of today. In fact, my favorite four essays were the ones focusing on amendments nine and ten.
So overall, this book's quality is high. On the whole, the essays are well written and exciting. But whether or not you've made up your mind on original meaning vs. broad principle jurisprudence, do check out "Interpreting the Constitution" edited by Jack Rakove.
A Must Read.......2000-09-26
Anyone involved in law or public policy must read this book. Hickok, perhaps one of the leading political scientists of our time, brilliantly describes the origin of the Bill of Rights, what it meant to the early Americans, and how we should understand it today. It's not often that you have a guide to take you back in history to such an important time and to look at the historical context of a document as crucial as the Bill of Rights!
Great book.......2000-03-29
This book is a great book for pre-law students. I was considering law and this book really got me interested in researching law more.
Book Description
A definitive guide to Arizona government that is as comprehensive as it is easy to understand. It provides a thorough explanation of the state's constitution and shows the impact that its unique features have had on the everyday operation of the state's political system. Much of the information it contains is based on original research compiled by the author from primary sources and draws on her direct experience with government processes, officials, and events. For lawyers and business people, it makes available a brief yet sophisticated synopsis of state government along with a wealth of citations and supporting detail. For concerned citizens, it offers topics of special interest to voters--including facts about initiatives and referenda and a chapter on local government--and contains references to online government resources.
Customer Reviews:
An Outstanding and Readable Source ..........2006-09-12
"Understanding the Arizona Constitution" was an invaluable tool for me as I took an Arizona Constitutional Law class in my 2nd year of law school. The reading for the class consisted of case after case organized by the professor and divided up into different topics relevant to the Arizona Constitution specifically. This book provided a very concise, yet informative background on Arizona's Constitution. It covered the same topics we covered in class and stated principles simply while providing understandable and appropriate anecdotes.
For example, in explaining Arizona's progressive referendum and initiative process, the author discussed the process by which Arizona State University became a university in the mid-1950's. The book also anecdotally explained the recall drive and impeachment of former governor Evan Mecham and the Constitutional implications associated with that process. Summarily, the author explains Arizona's government and its subtle differences between it and the federal government. The author has done a fantastic job in elucidating the intricacies of the Arizona Constitution and, almost more importantly, why those differences exist.
I would highly reccomend this book to anyone who is looking for any reference material preceding an academic study (law school, etc.) of the Arizona Constitution.
Not enough for the Arizona test!.......2006-01-30
This book was amazingly well written and easy to follow. I enjoyed learning more about the Arizona government. However, I don't think that it was enough to study for the Arizona Constitution test for teacher certification.
Every Arizona Citizen Should Read This Book.......2005-05-11
This book contains a very interesting history of Arizona, and an explanation of the rights of Arizona citizens under the constitution. It clearly explains the often confusing processes of initiative, referendum, and recall and also details the layout and powers of each governmental branch. The whole book is in an easy to understand, conversational tone. If you want more information on something she talks about, she provides endnotes with explanations and sources. Every citizen of Arizona should have a copy of the book to read and consult. The book is concise, interesting, and just long enough to tell you almost everything you want to know about Arizona's government.
Required reading for everyone living in Arizona.......2001-12-23
Outstanding. Readable and understandable for laymen (and laywomen). It should be required reading for every voter in Arizona. High Schools and colleges should have courses with this as the text.
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Understanding the European Constitution: An Introduction to the EU Constitutional Treaty
Clive Church
Manufacturer: Brunner-Routledge
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Book Description
The European Union's Constitutional treaty has been much talked about, usually critically, by those who see it either as a blueprint for a centralized and protectionist super-state or as the triumph of Anglo-Saxon economics that will undermine the European social model and the institutions which support it. It has created great controversy throughout Europe yet it has been little read, notably in the United Kingdom, partly because the text has not been widely circulated.
Understanding the European Constitution seeks to redress this imbalance and is the only book in English to give the reader an impartial and concise view of this Treaty. It is an invaluable tool to understanding the Treaty and includes a copy of the core document in full, a detailed and expert analysis of its main themes and a brief introduction to the rest of the treaty. The issues that are covered include:
*How and why the treaty came about
*How its content compares to the European Union's existing treaties
*Why it has attracted so much controversy
*The difficulties in trying to understand it, notably its dual status as treaty and constitution
*The way that the treaty will be ratified and the issues that will figure in this ratification debate
Understanding the European Constitution is written in uncomplicated language with explanatory tables and a glossary by two long standing students of the treaties. It is essential reading for all students with interests in Politics, the European Union and Law.
Books:
- United Nations: The First Fifty Years
- Utopia (Penguin Classics)
- Victory on the Potomac: The Goldwater-Nichols Act Unifies the Pentagon (Texas a & M University Military History Series)
- Walden and Civil Disobedience (150th Anniversary) (Signet Classics)
- Who Will Tell The People? : The Betrayal Of American Democracy
- Why Americans Hate Politics
- Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny
- A Vietnam Experience: Ten Years of Reflection (Publication Series: No. 315)
- Accounting for Governmental and Nonprofit Entities with City of Smithville
- After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton Classic Editions)
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