Old Principles, New Constitutions, 1783–1790

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Owen
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
The State ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
State Constitution ◽  
The Us ◽  
Federal Constitutional ◽  
Us Constitution

This chapter investigates the period between the federal Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the revision of the Pennsylvania State Constitution in 1790. Debates over the ratification of the US Constitution grew out of and reflected long-running Pennsylvanian debates over ideal forms of government. These debates—rhetorically and literally violent—saw Federalists adopt the language of their Anti-Federalist opponents in using popular sovereignty and a participatory political culture to justify their new frame of government. This widened debates on governmental reform to include extra-governmental activism alongside formal structures of government. Thus the success of Pennsylvanian Federalists in revising the state constitution in 1790 was only possible through legitimizing extra-governmental mobilization—which in turn ensured that the spirit of the 1776 constitution remained at the heart of Pennsylvanian politics.

Price Fixing and the Political Community, 1778–1779

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Owen
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Regulation ◽  
State Constitution ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right

In 1779, Pennsylvanians undertook a bold experiment in economic regulation—forming price-fixing committees to reverse wartime inflation. This chapter analyzes the committees’ structure and the context in which they were created. Winter 1778 saw great political turbulence: the evacuation of Philadelphia, treason trials, and an attempt to rewrite the state constitution. By 1779, defenders of the constitution were using price-fixing committees as a means of defending a Constitutionalist vision of government in which the people held the reins of power and the right to shape that government. Though the committees struggled to establish universal legitimacy, they helped legitimate a robust participatory political culture based upon popular sovereignty. This culture, though, remained turbulent, as in the Fort Wilson Incident of October 1779, in which militiamen surrounded the house of Republican politician James Wilson. This chapter investigates how Constitutionalists defended their vision of political culture even during periods of great upheaval.

scholarly journals Voting Rights for Non-Citizens: The European Multilevel and the US Federal Constitutional Systems Compared

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 392-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Fabbrini
Keyword(s):  
State Level ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
The State ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Federal System ◽  
Future Prospects ◽  
The Us ◽  
Comparative Methodology ◽  
Federal Constitutional ◽  
Regulatory Models

Voting rights – Citizens and aliens – European multilevel architecture – US federal system – Comparative methodology – Different regulatory models for non-citizens suffrage at the state level in Europe – Impact of supranational law – Challenges and tensions – Analogous dynamics in the US constitutional experience – Recent European legal and jurisprudential developments in comparative perspective – What future prospects for citizenship and democracy in Europe?

The US Constitution and monetary powers: an analysis of the 1787 constitutional convention and the constitutional transformation of the US monetary system

2006 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
FARLEY GRUBB
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
Watershed Transformation ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Legal Tender ◽  
Paper Money ◽  
Monetary System ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution

The monetary powers embedded in the US Constitution were revolutionary and led to a watershed transformation in the nation's monetary structure. They included determining what monies could be legal tender, who could emit fiat paper money, and who could incorporate banks. How the debate at the 1787 constitutional convention over these powers evolved and led the founding fathers to the specific powers adopted is presented and deconstructed. Why they took this path rather than replicate the successful colonial system and why they codified such powers into supreme law rather than leaving them to legislative debate and enactment are addressed.

An Ordinary Founder

2019 ◽  
pp. 132-158
Author(s):  
Karl Rodabaugh
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
The State ◽  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
Lower House ◽  
Federal Constitutional

Born in New Bern in 1758 to a prominent colonial official, Richard Dobbs Spaight rose quickly in North Carolina politics, becoming an aide-de-camp to Governor Richard Caswell in 1778. He later served as speaker of the lower house of the state assembly, as a member of Congress under the Articles of Confederation, and as governor. As a delegate to the federal Constitutional Convention, Spaight made one highly significant procedural motion: to permit a delegate to request reconsideration of a previously decided issue. A Federalist and a conservative, Spaight believed in the rule of elite, and in his mind, public-spirited slave-owners. In the late 1790s, however, he became a Democratic-Republican. A partisan feud led to his death in a duel with Federalist John Stanly in 1802.

Judicial Review

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-68
Author(s):  
Jeffrey S. Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
The State ◽  
State Courts ◽  
Court Case ◽  
State Laws ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Supreme Court ◽  
Us Constitution

The conventional account of judicial review starts with a US Supreme Court case, Marbury v. Madison. But judicial review in truth starts with the state courts and the state constitutions, not the US Supreme Court and the US Constitution. Before the US Constitution existed, the state courts established American judicial review and were the first courts to wrestle with the complexities of exercising it. Judicial review also is foremost a structural story, not an individual-rights story. The delegation of power to the judiciary to decide the meaning of our constitutions laid the groundwork for the growth in power of American courts—especially the federal courts, which have become the go-to answer for so many who-decides questions in American government over the last seventy-five years. This chapter begins a search for insights in resolving the dilemma of judicial review by looking at how the state courts innovated the concept and the ways they initially practiced it. It shows that the early state courts were deferential to the democratic branches of government. They rarely invalidated state laws and did so only when these laws violated a clear constitutional rule. That approach offers lessons for federal and state courts alike.

European ‘Citizenship’: In its Own Right and in Comparison with the United States

2003 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 357-394
Author(s):  
Thomas C Fischer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
Member State ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
The State ◽  
European Citizenship ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution

The fourteenth amendment to the US Constitution, adopted in 1868, provides in relevant part: ‘All persons born or naturalised in the United States … are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.’ A similar passage in the Treaty of European Union (TEU or Maastricht), Article 8 (now Article 17(1)), declared: ‘Citizenship of the Union is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union.’

European ‘Citizenship’: In its Own Right and in Comparison with the United States

2003 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 357-394
Author(s):  
Thomas C Fischer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
Member State ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
The State ◽  
European Citizenship ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution

The fourteenth amendment to the US Constitution, adopted in 1868, provides in relevant part: ‘All persons born or naturalised in the United States … are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.’ A similar passage in the Treaty of European Union (TEU or Maastricht), Article 8 (now Article 17(1)), declared: ‘Citizenship of the Union is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union.’

Union

2021 ◽  
pp. 35-74
Author(s):  
Max M. Edling
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
American Union ◽  
And Control

The preamble’s promise of “a more perfect union” suggests that the US Constitution of 1787 aimed to reform the less than perfect union established by the Articles of Confederation of 1781. The framers’ understanding of union was grounded in early modern political ideas about confederations, and their call for reform in their analysis of the flaws of the articles. Their reform of the American union was characterized by both change and continuity. Although the Constitution laid the basis for a federal government founded on popular sovereignty and capable of acting independently of the states, the fundamental purpose of the American union and the remit of the federal government remained the management of intraunion and international affairs. In the reformed American federal union the states still retained the power to regulate the social, economic, and civic life of their citizens and inhabitants with only limited supervision and control from the federal government.

Internal Police

2021 ◽  
pp. 75-104
Author(s):  
Max M. Edling
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
The State ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Police Powers ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
Domestic Affairs ◽  
American Union ◽  
Shed Light

The US Constitution reserved to the member-states of the American federal union the power to regulate their internal police. Now largely forgotten, but much in use in the decades surrounding the American founding, the term internal police described an extensive range of activities that eighteenth-century states did to regulate their societies and their economies. By recovering the illusive meaning of internal police and by studying how the Constitution distributed internal police powers between Congress and the state governments, it is possible to shed light on how the Constitution divided political authority between the states and the federal government in the American union. The analysis in this chapter shows that under the Constitution, domestic affairs in the early United States was overwhelmingly meant to be regulated by the state governments and not the federal government.

Anti-Suffragists at the 1894 New York State Constitutional Convention

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Goodier
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York State ◽  
The State ◽  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
York State ◽  
Temporary Organizations ◽  
State Constitution ◽  
Conservative Women

This chapter explores the earliest attempts by conservative women to organize anti-suffrage activity. It was not until Susan B. Anthony and other suffragists conducted state tours in preparation for the New York State Constitutional Convention that anti-suffragists surprised suffragists by establishing temporary organizations to prevent the removal of the word “male” from the state constitution, and presented their views in opposition to enfranchisement and the protection of their existing rights. Their rhetoric developed out of the tradition of male anti-suffrage rhetoric, but the women articulated their own views of opposition to enfranchisement. Women who established these short-lived organizations laid the foundation for the women who established organizations in the next period of anti-suffrage.

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