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The American Constitutional Tradition - Colonial Charters, Covenants, and Revolutionary State Constitutions, 1578-1780 (Hardcover)
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The American Constitutional Tradition - Colonial Charters, Covenants, and Revolutionary State Constitutions, 1578-1780 (Hardcover)
Series: The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Series in Law, Culture, and the Humanities
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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The book is a work of non-fiction. The book is a historical
analysis of the evolution of a uniquely American constitutionalism
that began with the original English royal charters for the
exploration and exploitation of North America. When the U.S.
Constitution was written in 1787, the accepted conception of a
constitution was that of the British constitution, upon which the
colonists had relied in asserting their rights with respect to the
imperium, comprised of ancient documents, parliamentary enactments,
administrative regulations, judicial pronouncements, and
established custom. Of equal significance, the laws comprising the
constitution did not differ from other statutes and as a
consequence, there was no law endowed with greater sanctity than
other legislative enactments. In framing the revolutionary state
constitutions following the retreat of the crown governments in the
colonies, as well as the later federal Constitution, the
Revolutionaries fundamentally reconceived a constitution as being
the single authoritative source of fundamental law that was
superior to all other statutes, regulations, and judicial
decisions, that was ratified by the states and that was subject to
revision only through a formal amendment process. This new
constitutional conception has been hailed as the great innovation
of the revolutionary period, and deservedly so. This American
constitutionalism had its origins in the now largely overlooked
royal charters for the exploration of North America beginning with
the charter granted to Sir Humphrey Gilbert by Elizabeth I in 1578.
The book follows the development of this constitutional tradition
from the early charters of the Virginia Companies and the covenants
entered of the New England colonies, through the proprietary
charters of the Middle Atlantic colonies. On the basis of those
foundational documents, the colonists fashioned governments that
came to be comprised not only of an executive, but an elected
legislature and a judiciary. In those foundational documents and in
the acts of the colonial legislatures, the settlers sought to
harmonize their aspirations for just institutions and individual
rights with the exigencies and imperatives of an alien and often
hostile environment. When the colonies faced the withdrawal of the
crown governments in 1775, they drew on their experience, which
they formalized in written constitutions. This uniquely American
constitutional tradition of the charters, covenants and state
constitutions was the foundation of the federal Constitution and of
the process by which the Constitution was written and ratified a
decade later.
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