General Tendencies in State Constitutions

1907 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-212
Author(s):  
James Quayle Dealey
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Governmental Organization ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Flexible System ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Fundamental Law ◽  
National Constitution ◽  
Revolutionary Period ◽  
Modern Form

Throughout classical and medieval philosophizing runs a theory of a paramount or fundamental law, permanent in kind, because fixed in nature. This theory in its modern form, after voicing itself for a time in the Cromwellian period, came to the front in the American Revolution and found its proper expression in the written constitution. In our federal system, owing to the rigidity of the national Constitution, the development of that document must be traced in the varying decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. In the Commonwealths a more flexible system of amendment prevails, and for that reason changes in what the States consider to be their fundamental law, may be traced more easily in the constitutions themselves, subject as they are to frequent revision and amendment.In the Revolutionary period these constitutions were few in number, small in size, and contained a mere framework of governmental organization. Since that time some two hundred State constitutions have been made or revised. The forty-five now in force average in length over fifteen thousand words, the longest, that of Louisiana, having about forty-five thousand. In place of fundamentals only, they are filled with details, so petty in many instances, as hardly worthy even to be dignified as statutory.

Incorporation of the Law of Nations During the American Revolution—The Case of the San Antonio

1977 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 270-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry J. Bourguignon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
San Antonio ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Law ◽  
Anglo American

In an article published in this Journal in 1932, Professor Edwin Dickinson pointed out that the Supreme Court, in the first thirty years of its existence, dealt with 82 cases which raised questions of international law. The Court and counsel before it repeatedly cited the familiar writers on the law of nations: Grotius, Pufendorf, Bynkershoek, Burlamaqui, Rutherforth, and Vattel. As Dickinson pointed out, “It is an ancient doctrine of the Anglo-American common law that the law of nations is incorporated in and in some sense forms part of the national law.” Largely through decisions based on the principles expressed by the classical writers, the law of nations was early incorporated as part of the law of the United States.

Amending Procedure of the Federal Constitution

1916 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 689-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Tanger
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fundamental Law ◽  
First Time

The development of government on American soil presents, as one of its features, the embodiment in its fundamental law of provisions for its modification. The early colonial charters kept alive the fiction that a form of government once established was supposed by its creators to last forever. Only the slow change of custom or the violence of a revolution could modify or destroy such a system of government, except, as in the case of the charters granted by the crown, a modification came as a consequence of the exercise of the royal prerogative.In the Frame of Government drawn up by Penn and his colonists in 1683, appeared an amending provision for the first time in the history of written constitutions; and while all subsequent Pennsylvania charters contained a similar provision, the other colonial charters presented no method whatever for their alteration. Prior to the drafting of the Constitution of the United States, however, a method of amendment was embodied in the state constitutions of Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia, Vermont, South Carolina, and also in the Articles of Confederation.

State Constitutional Law in 1939–1940

1940 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 700-718
Author(s):  
Charles Aikin
Keyword(s):  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Appellate Courts ◽  
State Legislation ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Liberal Attitude ◽  
Degree Of Restraint ◽  
State Appellate Courts ◽  
The Times ◽  
National Constitution

During the past year, the state appellate courts have reviewed state legislation with a degree of restraint more marked than in the preceding year. The present attitude of the courts toward the work of legislatures may be in part the result of a change in court personnel. It is also both possible and probable that judges have been impressed by the more tolerant or liberal attitude of the United States Supreme Court. Finally, a few of the judges may have become aware of the fact that the times demand the relinquishment of an assumed judicial “supremacy” and the examination of legislative and administrative action under specific constitutional provisions in the light of social and economic realities. At all events, judicial review in the grand manner has given way to a more vigorous application of technical constitutional requirements. Courts are tending to emphasize procedure rather than substance; review appears to be at once more tolerant and more precise; decisions turn on narrower grounds, premises are less sweeping. When applied to state constitutions, this tendency means something quite different from what it means when applied to the national constitution.This tendency may perhaps be regarded as charged with possible evil results for the courts. Although state constitutions are, in most cases, so detailed and diverse that no actual diminution of the courts' discretionary powers need result, and although to a successful litigant it makes little difference whether a statute is invalidated for want of due process or for want of a proper title or enacting clause, it is difficult to conceive of many things that will bring the courts more quickly into popular disrepute than an exaggeration of constitutional technicalities.

scholarly journals From the Company Town to the Innovation Zone: Frontiers of Public Policy, the State Action Doctrine, and the First Amendment

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Peabody ◽  
Kyle Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Economic Trend ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Company Town ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
State Action ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Private Power ◽  
National Constitution ◽  
State Action Doctrine

Abstract This article draws on the state action doctrine and the case Marsh v. Alabama to evaluate a recent proposal to create an unprecedented public-private partnership in the state of Nevada. In Marsh, the Supreme Court of the United States held that a private citizen was protected under the U.S. Constitution's First and Fourteenth Amendments in distributing religious literature on the sidewalk of a “company-owned” town. We make the case that both the state policy under consideration and a number of political and economic trend lines indicate that the issue central to Marsh remains pressing at the start of our new millennium: what are the circumstances under which concentrated private power amounts to something akin to government authority, thereby implicating the protections of the national Constitution? Our goal in this piece is not to offer an exhaustive or thorough review of the particulars of the “Innovation Zone” bill under consideration, but to consider, in advance, constitutional problems that might arise from granting corporations broad powers traditionally wielded by governments.

State Constitutional Law in 1935–36

1936 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 692-712
Author(s):  
J. A. C. Grant
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Constitutional Development ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Chief Justice ◽  
Fundamental Law ◽  
Law Courts ◽  
National Constitution ◽  
State Constitutional Law ◽  
American State

There is a kernel of truth in Chief Justice Hughes' remark that “we are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.” To realize its full significance, “constitution” must be written in the plural. We have forty-nine courts of last resort, each interpreting the fundamental law of its own jurisdiction. The essential similarity of our state constitutions, and of our state bills of rights to that of the national constitution, together with the tendency of common law courts to follow each other's decisions, lend an element of stability to American state constitutional law that otherwise would be lacking. At the same time, even within so short a period as a year, the interplay of personalities may be seen moulding new doctrines in particular jurisdictions, which doctrines take on added significance because of the realization that they may, in time, serve as a basis for redirecting the course of constitutional development in other jurisdictions as well.

In the Supreme Court of the United States: Clara Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust..

1988 ◽  
Vol 43 (12) ◽  
pp. 1019-1028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald N. Bersoff ◽  
Laurel P. Malson ◽  
Donald B. Verrilli
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fort Worth ◽  
The Supreme Court
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