This book is the most comprehensive review of all the major proposals to rewrite, revise, or even replace the U.S. Constitution, covering more than 170 proposals from the nation's beginnings to the present day. The U.S. Constitution was carefully written by a remarkable group of men, but subsequent generations of Americans have devoted enormous time and energy to "improving" it. From colonial times to the present day, Americans of all political persuasions have campaigned to reform, remake, or replace this key document. The growth of the Internet and self-publishing has spawned a virtual explosion of such proposals. This book documents the numerous ideas for change-some practical, some idealistic, and some bordering on fanatical-that reflect America's Constitutional heritage and could shape the nation's future. Re-Framers: 170 Eccentric, Visionary, and Patriotic Proposals to Rewrite the U.S. Constitution sets the stage for this review by describing various prequels to the U.S. Constitution and explaining how the final document emerged at the Constitutional Convention. The subsequent chapters examine many proposed alternatives and revisions to the Constitution from its establishment until the present, illuminating perceived strengths and weaknesses of the current document as well as the pros and cons of possible amendments. Readers ranging from lay citizens who are interested in constitutional issues to historians, political scientists, law professors, and reference librarians will all benefit from this unparalleled examination of proposed constitutional amendment. Discusses more than 170 proposed major alterations in-or alternatives to-the U.S. Constitution, from the beginning of the republic to the present Includes proposals from nearly every political group imaginable, including advocates of parliamentary democracy, communists, Democrats, Libertarians, Progressives, Republicans, socialists, and Tea Party members Presents the major plans that preceded or were considered in the writing of the U.S. Constitution Provides biographical information of individuals who made proposals to alter or replace the Constitution Includes appendixes containing the full text of the U.S. Constitution and all 27 amendments to the Constitution

Democratization is a sociopolitical process and the society that may grow out of it where people make decisions on matters affecting them. It is an unending struggle to win such rights and power, to hold and to extend them. The contending classes are essentially the poor and weak majority of the people and the elite of wealth, status, and power. This book begins with the study of politics in democratic Athens 508-322 BCE, and how it revolved around the divisions between an uneducated poor majority of citizens and a small, wealthy elite. All citizens were deemed equally capable of holding political office, and life in democratic Athens was itself an education through the wide political experience a citizen necessarily acquired. The second study is of Britain's centuries long and profoundly incomplete democratization, polarizing usually the urban poor, unequally against the Grandees, the oligarchy, and subsequent elites. A third exemplifier is South Africa, beginning in the 1970s-80s when two big processes were going on simultaneously: an external armed struggle led by the African National Congress (ANC), and a path-breaking domestic democratization represented by the United Democratic Front and the trade unions. The democratization that emerges here is a matter of aspiration and impulse by determined men and women, which fail more often than they succeed, yet appear again in other times and places. Two main models of democracy are in contention. A representative from revolving around free elections, in which competing elites "get themselves elected" utilizing their wealth and celebrity. The liberal form achieved preeminence in Britain and the United States over some 150 years, but is now under serious threat from its own dysfunctionalities and the alienation of its citizens from its institutions and their elitist, self-serving values. And there is the participatory model, now being approached again since the mid-1970s in many places, from Portugal, Poland and Czechoslovakia, to South Africa, Tunisia, Egypt, and Iceland. Many such impulses will fail, but they offer hope, and on the record, immense satisfaction to their participants.

Before it became a federation, the United States was briefly a confederation, a much looser union composed of states rather than of peoples. Unions of states to promote ecomomic well-being and to prevent war are now being revived. Mr. Lister analyzes modern confederalism, and how it is functioning in the single market of the Europen Union and how it might function if the collective security system of the United Nations could be carried out, as originally planned, by a confederal-style partnership of the world's independent states. Political scientists have traditionally classified voluntary polities as confederations, federations, or unitary states. But they have ignored the first of these classes, perhaps because Alexander Hamilton, wishing to mobilize support for the new federal constitution, discredited not only the United States Confederation but the whole class of confederations as a viable method of governance. More than 200 years later, confederation as a form of governance is still under a cloud. Yet it has been resurfacing, largely unrecognized for what it is, in the repertory of government. In the treaties of Rome and Maastricht and in the collective security system of the Charter, the European Union and the United Nations are already involved in forms of governance that are confederal in all but name. Lister's book describes confederal governance and how such unions of states differ from intergovernmental organizations on the one hand and federations on the other. Meticulously researched and carefully argued, it draws upon his five years of study of confederal unions from Ancient Greece through the 19th-century Germanic Confederation and the German Zollverein. But his book is not a history of confederations. Instead, it shows how long-term alliances sometimes evolve into unions of states and, in time, into communities of the peoples who live in those states. It also shows how the ties of confederal union have been institutionalized in modern times in the EU and how they might be institutionalized in a global collective security body.^L ^L Finally, the book stresses the urgency of moving in this direction because we shall face a very serious security problem in the next century. With the steady leakage of nuclear materials in Russia, the non-proliferation approach to controlling weapons of mass destruction appears to be breaking down. Lister argues that if and when governments are confronted with this looming problem, perhaps in the not-too-distant future, the confederal model may be the one that they will need to have updated and at their disposal.

This book explores how new governments and societies deal with a legacy of past repression, in Portugal, Spain, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Germany after reunification, as well as Russia, the Southern Cone of Latin America and Central America, as well as South Africa. It looks at official truth commissions, trials and amnesties and purges and unofficial social initiatives to deal with the past. The book also assesses the significance of forms of reckoning with the past for a process of democratic deepening as well as the importance of international actors in shaping policies to deal with past legacies in some of the countries examined.

The Federalist Papers serve as a primary source for interpretation of the Constitution, as they outline the philosophy and motivation of the proposed system of government. The authors of the Federalist Papers wanted to both influence the vote in favor of ratification and shape future interpretations of the Constitution. According to historian Richard B. Morris, they are an "incomparable exposition of the Constitution, a classic in political science unsurpassed in both breadth and depth by the product of any later American writer." The Federalist Papers consists of 85 articles advocating the ratification of the United States Constitution. Seventy-seven of the essays were published serially in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet between October 1787 and August 1788. This edition also includes the Deceleration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.

Understanding the impact of constitutional rights in the real world depends on understanding the law of constitutional remedies for their violation. Integrating the history, doctrine, and policy of constitutional remedy, Wells and Eaton explain how people go about trying to obtain redress for violations of their constitutional rights. Diverse issues arise when persons seek to bring a lawsuit against governments, officials, or private individuals for violation of their constitutional rights. Among them are whether the injury ought to be accorded constitutional status at all, or instead should be treated as a routine wrong, no different in principle from a traffic accident. If the case warrants constitutional status, the next issue is whether or not suit may be brought against the officer who committed the wrong or his government employer, and so on. On each of these and other issues the authors guide the reader through the complex body of doctrine, the lively case law debates, and the scholarly literature over the appropriate mix of policies and the means by which to achieve them.

Nowhere today is constitutional law more avidly debated and studied than in the 12 post-Soviet republics known as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Drawing on past experience as well as on European, American and Asian models, the constitutions of these countries have a great deal to tell the legal scholar about how the independent states of the post-Cold-War world understand the transition to a market economy. This text contains English translations which accurately present the current (1999) constitutional laws of all 12 CIS countries. The author and translator - himself active as an adviser on constitutional reform in several of these states - has taken care to establish the most authentic sources through an investigation of the existing documents and through personal interviews. From a great mass of confusing and often contradictory material in a dozen languages, he has assembled a coherent collection of documents that allows us to see the lineaments of constitutional law at a crucial stage of development in this fast-changing region of great economic significance.

"The First Black President" is a critical and passionate reflection on the political and historical implications of an Obama administration concerning the issue of race in America. Obama's rise to political power has forever changed the contours of race relations in the country as many hail the new age of a "post-racial" society. Yet, an Obama presidency could further complicate real racial progress and could set race relations back in the country for decades to come if not viewed in the proper context. The book demonstrates that the Obama presidency must be celebrated as a historical triumph based on America's racist past, but also the struggle for equality, justice and freedom must also intensify with recognition of its global consequences. The problem of race in America no longer just affects American citizens but impacts cultures around the globe. The book speaks to both optimists and pessimists alike who are struggling to understand how race factors into the domestic and international policy agenda of Obama who now sits in the highest seat of political and global power.

Inaugurating "Greenw4ood's Reference Guides to the United States Constitution" series, this superlative guide to the Sixth Amendment is the first to survey the legal guarantee of counsel's assistance since 1963's "Gideon" ruling. The vast majority of important, even landmark cases regarding the right to counsel were decided after that pivotal ruling, making this the definitive work on the topic. Tomkovicz offers a concise yet substantial account of the historical development of the right to counsel in England and America.

Included are:

A brief history of the topic

Lengthy and sophisticated analysis of the current state of the law

A bibliographical essay organizing and evaluating scholarly material for further research

A table of cases

Index

A thorough analysis of the relevant U.S. Supreme Court's doctrine gives concrete content to the right to assistance of defense counsel. Scholars and students of the U.S. Constitution, along with attorneys and lay readers, will gain a rich understanding of the meaning and importance of the Sixth Amendment, and a comprehensive overview of a cornerstone of America's constitutional and legal order.

In Marbury v. Madison Chief Justice John Marshall defined the Constitution as "a superior, paramount law," one that superseded the laws passed by Congress and state legislatures. What makes it paramount? This book sets out to recover the enduring principles, purposes, and meanings that inform the founders' charter and continue to offer us political guidance more than 200 years later. In so doing it steers a middle course between "originalists" who constrict interpretation to constitutional specifics and "relativists" who adapt the Constitution to the moment by ignoring original meaning. "Original intent," Ralph Ketcham argues, is best discerned by a study of the political climate that nourished the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and, more particularly, by understanding the broader meanings, intentions, and purposes of the framers.

To recover this full context of political thinking, Ketcham delves not only into the meaning of the documents but also into the connotations of the framers' vocabulary, the reasoning behind both accepted and rejected propositions, arguments for and against, and unstated assumptions. In his analysis the fundamental or enduring principles are republicanism, liberty, public good, and federalism (as part of the broader doctrine of balance of powers).

Ketcham answers convincingly those who question the relevance to modern constitutional interpretation of the finding that the founders were both republican and liberal. He asserts that the rights-protecting character of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights derived from the founders' belief that private rights depended upon active government and public virtue. In other words, private liberties rested on the citizenry's right to self-governance.

James Madison sought to ensure a system of government that would serve as guardian "both of public Good and of private rights." In providing an interpretation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that incorporates both republican and liberal perspectives, Ketcham should find a wide readership among politically active citizens, lawyers, judges, and those who teach and study constitutional law and political theory.

In The American Ali Baba, the author draws an amazing parallel between an ancient Arabic folktale and the tragedy of the current American Presidency. Full of intrigue and drama, both plots revolve around thievery, lies, deception, trickery and murder, all veiled in intense secrecy. Both stories portray central characters on greedy missions to amass a fortune, at the expense of others. The book presents an abbreviated version of the ancient tale and an overview of the American forefathers' intent and Bill of Rights. Finally, the modern tragedy unfolds through a clear, concise examination of the shadowy shenanigans of the American Ali Baba and his 40 conniving neocon thieves.

This book contributes to the increasing interest in John Adams and his political and legal thought by examining his work on the medieval British Empire. For Adams, the conflict with England was constitutional because there was no British Empire, only numerous territories including the American colonies not consolidated into a constitutional structure. Each had a unique relationship to the English. In two series of essays he rejected the Parliament's claim to legislate for the internal governance of the American colonies. His Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765) identified these claims with the Yoke, Norman tyranny over the defeated Saxons after 1066. Parliament was seeking to treat the colonists in similar fashion. The Novanglus essays (1774-75), traced the origin of the colonies, demonstrating that Parliament played no role in their establishment and so had no role in their internal governance without the colonists' subsequent consent.

As part of a new series of Greenwood's comprehensive reference guides to the United States Constitution, Professor Durchslag's edition on the Eleventh Amendment's guarantee of state sovereign immunity is the most thorough and up-to-date treatment of that amendment. The Court's interpretation of the Eleventh Amendment over the past two centuries has been an attempt to balance the sovereign interests of the states against the primacy of federal law, and is currently its primary means of articulating its federalist doctrine. Beginning with an extensive history of the Eleventh Amendment and the ratification debates surrounding it, Durchslag proceeds to a chronological discussion of the development of the first generation of Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence from 1793 - 1890. The book then proceeds topically, tracing the developments of the various doctrinal components of the Amendment, and includes suggestions as to how they may evolve. The work concludes with an erudite bibliographic essay to guide the reader to relevant primary and secondary works, and is fully indexed. For constitutional students, scholars, and legal practitioners, as well as for political scientists and historians studying the constitution or federalism.

Noted experts examine America's power to go to war historically and recently, now that the Cold War has ended. They propose ways that the Congress and the president might develop a new working consensus for dealing with the use of military or paramilitary force in the future. This scholarly study of constitutional and statutory proscriptions, UN treaty and international obligations, and judicial restraints is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students, law students, teachers, and professionals concerned with constitutional interpretation, the government's division of power, and war making.

From colonial times to the information age, an exhaustive survey of one of America's most contentious constitutional rights. Freedom of Association: Rights and Liberties under the Law chronicles the evolution of a right derived from but not granted in the First Amendment-freedom of association. An opening analysis of the Supreme Court's ruling against a gay adult member of the Boy Scouts of America illustrates the range and complexity of this issue. Historical discussions of colonial America, including the British Parliament's efforts to suppress political associations, set the stage for a careful scrutiny of the political and legislative activities of the 1950s and 1960s when the Supreme Court established freedom of association as a constitutionally protected right. A concluding chapter delves into the contemporary issues of antidiscriminatory and campaign finance laws and explores the ever-present tension between liberty-freedom from the state-and equality-protection by the state. Extensive A-Z entries on individuals like Alexis de Tocqueville and Robert Putnam, organizations such as the NAACP, and concepts, terms, and events Chronology of key developments in the history of freedom of association, including Boy Scouts of America v. Dale and the Communist Control Act of 1954

The book will follow the general outline of the Reader's Guides series. It will begin by setting the work in context, giving a brief biography of Plato, examining his relationship with Socrates, discussing the relationship between the Republic and Plato's other works and introducing the Athenian institutions examined in the Republic. The major themes discussed in the Republic are introduced and discussed in brief, before embarking on a more detailed discussion of the key sections and passages in the Reading the Text section. Here, the author will outline and comment on the claims made in the key passages, suggesting criticism where appropriate and providing questions for further thought. (See Full Contents for further details) A section on Reception and Influence will discuss some of the numerous areas of subsequent thought the Republic has impacted upon, including Aristotle, Plato's influence on Kant's ehtics and Popper's virulent criticism of Plato as an 'enemy of the open society'. A section on Further Reading will contain advice on various translations of the Republic, a guide to some other useful commentaries on the text and information on books and articles about specific topics.

These are the proceedings of the 2nd Krefeld Historical Symposium of 1987 - a meeting of 34 distinguished historians to compare the constitutional history of Germany and the USA. Interdisciplinary in approach - an encounter between legal historians and those specializing in political and social history - the emphasis is on concrete historical realities of constitutional thought in both countries. Dissimilarities between the countries are highlighted in addition to ascertaining factors common to both, to explain why their respective developments diverged. There are 12 papers included, two from each of the six sessions.

This book describes why the politically democratic state is a mythical and illegitimate concept that does not and cannot work and why, without the corrective market feedback of profits and losses, this unstable, unmanageable, inefficient and authoritative social organization will cause its own demise. The Road to Freedom and the Demise of Nation States maps out an alternative path leading to a new contractual social organization based upon individual sovereignty and freedom. Under this natural government of decentralized economic democracy, individuals vote with their money ballot for the products and services they want, including protection and jurisprudence. The Road to Freedom constitutes an evolutionary continuation of the principles of individual sovereignty and freedom underlying the American Revolution, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, leading to worldwide peace and prosperity.

Federalism has experienced a remarkable renaissance in recent decades - as an alternative way to accommodate ethnic differences; as a tool to combat remote, undemocratic and ineffective central governments; and lastly, as a means to promote economic performance in the developing world through decentralisation. This book seeks to bring different aspects and perspectives of federalism studies closer together, by providing an analytical framework which transcends the sub-fields and encourages contributors to look beyond the comfort zones of their own disciplinary approaches to the topic. The authors seek to achieve this aim by structuring the contributions around four dimensions federalism studies: * the development and design of federal institutions; * federalism and democratic participation, representation and accountability; * federalism and the accommodation of territorially-based ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences; * federalism and public policy. With a strong comparative framework, New Directions in Federalism Studies will be of interest to students and scholars of Federalism, Government, Regionalism, and Multi-level Governance. It will also offer insights of relevance to Comparative Politics, Public Policy, Public Administration, Nationalism, and West European Politics.