“To Change the Fundamental Law of the State”: Protective Labor Provisions in U.S. Constitutions

2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Zackin
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Union Organizing ◽  
Worker Rights ◽  
Constitutional Development ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Labor Activism ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Labor Legislation

As the United States industrialized, its state constitutions began to include protections for laborers. In this article, I describe the origins of these constitutional provisions and ask why labor organizations and other reformers pursued their inclusion in state constitutions. I argue that they saw state constitutions as a vehicle to prompt reluctant legislatures to pass protective statutes, to entrench existing protections against future legislatures, to safeguard labor legislation from constitutional challenges in state courts, and to facilitate further union organizing. Labor activism in this arena is particularly interesting in light of the literature on constitutional change, which contends that constitutional development is a tool through which actors attempt to usher courts into political conflicts; in contrast, I will argue that unions turned to constitutional change in large part to exclude courts from policymaking. Further, the union activism on behalf of constitutional change serves as a challenge to the prominent view among many scholars of American political development and law that judicial hostility to worker rights and union organizing discouraged unions from demanding state protection or institutionalizing their demands through law.

scholarly journals The Varieties of Constitutional Change

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Friedman
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
State Courts ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Judicial Interpretation ◽  
Constitutional Development ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Federal Constitutional ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Robert Williams

New England Law Review. Vol. 51(3)(2018). While federal constitutional law has changed over the two hundred plus years since the framing, relatively little of that development was the result of the formal amendment process prescribed by Article V. Rather, significantly more change to our understanding of numerous constitutional provisions has come about through litigation over the meaning of the text. Regardless of the source of constitutional alteration, we regard the result as valid constitutional law. But that difference in source has fueled a great many efforts to legitimize judicial interpretation as a mode of constitutional change—to legitimize, that is, constitutional development by the least representative, least accountable department of the federal government. State constitutions, on the other hand, tell a different story. In the state constitutional context, the tension between litigation-driven change and amendment-driven change is diminished by the fact that formal amendment is a more realistic proposition that it is under the U.S. Constitution. This piece is an introduction to a Symposium on the relationship between state courts and constitutional change under state constitutions. The Symposium focuses on Jonathan Marshfield’s article, “Courts and Informal Constitutional Change in the States,” and includes responsive essays by Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Associate Justice Scott Kafker, Justin Long, James Gardner, Yaniv Roznai, and Robert Williams.

State, Representative Government and Revolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Paccione
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
Constitutional Development ◽  
Major Aspect ◽  
The Relationship

This is a work of comparative political and constitutional history. The main theme of this essay is the relationship between the executive prerogative and the legislative power held by representative institutions. I analyze the constitutional histories of five countries, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, and I consider the location of the supreme lawmaking power within the respective governments. One major aspect of constitutional development which is studied is the role of revolutions. In each account, I trace the major constitutional developments of the revolutions which occurred in each country. One theme of my consideration of revolutions is how they served as a means of constitutional change in each country. Another characteristic of revolutions which is studied was how closely the governments which resulted from the revolutions resembled the old regimes which they replaced. I also briefly analyze the constitutional histories of China, Japan, and Iran, pointing out how they contrast with the European states.

Managing the Periphery in the Gilded Age: Writing Constitutions for the Western States

2008 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Bridges
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Labor Law ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Building ◽  
State Governments ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Constitutional Conventions

In this essay I argue that in the Gilded Age (the last quarter of the nineteenth century), delegates to constitutional conventions in the western territories designed state governments to manage, as best they could, the development of their economies. They were, and understood themselves to be, citizens of the periphery of the United States. Delegates to the conventions hoped to shield their states from the worst possible outcomes of that peripheral relationship, and foster the best ones. My arguments contribute to our understanding of state constitutions and, more broadly, to central concerns of American political development—regionalism, labor law, and state building.

James Bryce and the Australian Constitution

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-200
Author(s):  
Stephen Gageler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Constitutional Development ◽  
Practical Operation ◽  
Responsible Government ◽  
Shed Light

James Bryce was a contemporary of Albert Venn Dicey. Bryce published in 1888 The American Commonwealth. Its detailed description of the practical operation of the United States Constitution was influential in the framing of the Australian Constitution in the 1890s. The project of this article is to shed light on that influence. The article compares and contrasts the views of Bryce and of Dicey; Bryce's views, unlike those of Dicey, having been largely unexplored in contemporary analyses of our constitutional development. It examines the importance of Bryce's views on two particular constitutional mechanisms – responsible government and judicial review – to the development of our constitutional structure. The ongoing theoretical implications of The American Commonwealth for Australian constitutional law remain to be pondered.

The Oklahoma State Constitution

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny M. Adkison ◽  
Lisa McNair Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Progressive Era ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Development ◽  
Legal Decisions ◽  
United States Today ◽  
William Jennings Bryan ◽  
Constitutional Evolution ◽  
State Constitutional Law ◽  
Broad Understanding

In 1907, William Jennings Bryan described the proposed constitution for Oklahoma as “the best constitution in the United States today.” An enduring characteristic of Oklahoma’s constitution has been its faith in direct democracy and its root in Progressive Era politics. This book traces the historical formation and constitutional development of the state of Oklahoma. It provides commentary and analysis on the intent, politics, social and economic pressures, and the legal decisions that shaped and enhanced the Oklahoma constitution since it was adopted in 1907. The text gives a broad understanding of state constitutional law within the context of Oklahoma’s constitutional evolution.

WHAT ARE CONSTITUTIONS, AND WHAT SHOULD (AND CAN) THEY DO?

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Alexander
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Principal Function ◽  
Fundamental Law

AbstractA constitution is, as Article VI of the United States Constitution declares, the fundamental law of the land, supreme as a legal matter over any other nonconstitutional law. But that almost banal statement raises a number of theoretically vexed issues. What is law? How is constitutional law to be distinguished from nonconstitutional law? How do morality and moral rights fit into the picture? And what are the implications of the answers to these questions for such questions as how and by whom should constitutions be interpreted? These are the issues that I shall address.Alexander proceeds as follows: In section I he takes up law's principal function of settling controversies over what we are morally obligated to do. In section II he then relate law's settlement function to the role of constitutional law. In particular, he discusses how constitutional law is distinguished from ordinary law, and he also discusses the role of constitutions in establishing basic governmental structures and enforcing certain moral rights. In section III he addresses the topic of constitutional interpretation, and in section IV the topic of judicial review. Finally, in section V, he discusses constitutional change, both change that occurs through a constitution's own rules for amendments and change that is the product of constitutional misinterpretations and revolutions.

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