The Draft European Constitution was arguably both an attempt to constitutionalise the Union, re-framing that project in the language of the state, and an attempt to stretch the boundaries of ...constitutionalism itself, re-imagining that concept to accommodate the sui generis European Union. The (partial) failure of this project is the subject of this collection of essays. The collection brings together leading EU constitutional scholars to consider, with the benefit of hindsight, the purportedly constitutional character of the proposed Constitutional Treaty, the reasons for its rejection by voters in France and the Netherlands, the ongoing implications of this episode for the European project, and the lessons it teaches us about what constitutionalism really means.
The United States Constitution is a short document, and it is written in general language, which leaves much of the meaning unwritten and open to interpretation. Dig into this important document and ...watershed in the history of governments!Explore the history, the various clauses, amendments, and interpretations. Understand your rights (and responsibilities)!From the Constitutional Convention to the creation of the Constitution and its eventual ratification, and to the Bill of Rights and the thorny constitutional issues of today,The Constitution Explained:A Guide for Every Americancovers the history, our founding fathers goals, and the varied interpretations of the Constitution that have informed the politics and functioning of the U.S. government. Youll discover How the Constitution makes the United States of America different from many countries around the world because it gives us a peaceful mechanism to resolve governmental issuesThe rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizensAn in-depth look at the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of RightsThe Miracle at Philadelphia and the Great CompromiseThe many different methods used to interpret the ConstitutionControversial U.S. Supreme Court picks throughout history and how the size and tenure of the Supreme Court justices has long been a contentious issueThe remarkable evolution of death penalty jurisprudenceThe Bill Process, Pardon Power, Power of Judicial Review, and other stated and implied powers found in Articles I (Congress), II (Presidency) and III (Judicial)And much, much more!Aguide to the citizenship and the American government,The Constitution Explainedsheds a light on the differing and changing interpretations of the many broadly worded key phrases in the Constitution. Youll learn how the Constitution has been adopted to different times and various situations. Youll learn what it doesand does notpromise U.S. citizens. Richly illustrated, it also has a helpful bibliography, glossary, and extensive index. This invaluable resource is designed to help you understand the power and strength of the U.S. Constitution!
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, identified all legitimate voters as "male." In so doing, it added gender-specific language to the U.S. Constitution for the first time. Suffrage ...Reconstructed is the first book to consider how and why the amendment's authors made this decision. Vividly detailing congressional floor bickering and activist campaigning, Laura E. Free takes readers into the pre- and postwar fights over precisely who should have the right to vote. Free demonstrates that all men, black and white, were the ultimate victors of these fights, as gender became the single most important marker of voting rights during Reconstruction.
Free argues that the Fourteenth Amendment's language was shaped by three key groups: African American activists who used ideas about manhood to claim black men's right to the ballot, postwar congressmen who sought to justify enfranchising southern black men, and women's rights advocates who began to petition Congress for the ballot for the first time as the Amendment was being drafted. To prevent women's inadvertent enfranchisement, and to incorporate formerly disfranchised black men into the voting polity, the Fourteenth Amendment's congressional authors turned to gender to define the new American voter. Faced with this exclusion some woman suffragists, most notably Elizabeth Cady Stanton, turned to rhetorical racism in order to mount a campaign against sex as a determinant of one's capacity to vote. Stanton's actions caused a rift with Frederick Douglass and a schism in the fledgling woman suffrage movement. By integrating gender analysis and political history, Suffrage Reconstructed offers a new interpretation of the Civil War-era remaking of American democracy, placing African American activists and women's rights advocates at the heart of nineteenth-century American conversations about public policy, civil rights, and the franchise.
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, identified all legitimate voters as "male." In so doing, it added gender-specific language to the U.S. Constitution for the first time.Suffrage Reconstructedis the first book to consider how and why the amendment's authors made this decision. Vividly detailing congressional floor bickering and activist campaigning, Laura E. Free takes readers into the pre- and postwar fights over precisely who should have the right to vote. Free demonstrates that all men, black and white, were the ultimate victors of these fights, as gender became the single most important marker of voting rights during Reconstruction.Free argues that the Fourteenth Amendment's language was shaped by three key groups: African American activists who used ideas about manhood to claim black men's right to the ballot, postwar congressmen who sought to justify enfranchising southern black men, and women's rights advocates who began to petition Congress for the ballot for the first time as the Amendment was being drafted. To prevent women's inadvertent enfranchisement, and to incorporate formerly disfranchised black men into the voting polity, the Fourteenth Amendment's congressional authors turned to gender to define the new American voter. Faced with this exclusion some woman suffragists, most notably Elizabeth Cady Stanton, turned to rhetorical racism in order to mount a campaign against sex as a determinant of one's capacity to vote. Stanton's actions caused a rift with Frederick Douglass and a schism in the fledgling woman suffrage movement. By integrating gender analysis and political history,Suffrage Reconstructedoffers a new interpretation of the Civil War-era remaking of American democracy, placing African American activists and women's rights advocates at the heart of nineteenth-century American conversations about public policy, civil rights, and the franchise.
This study aims to critically investigate the common perception of constitutional adherence and trace it to the Constitution's legitimacy. However, the existing literature on the subject highlight ...lacunae in the predominant approaches to legitimacy. Concretizing a theoretical framework to address such lacunas, the authors claim that constitutional legitimacy is a dimensional non-constant and cannot be restricted to one principle or theory. The study adopts a doctrinal research methodology. The study results show that constitutional legitimacy should be understood holistically and not just through the instrumentalities of the 'We the People' paradigm of the Indian Constitution. The representative legitimacy or the idea of 'We the people' is an aspirational ideal; hence, dynamic and aspiration may become a reality as more and more citizens get socialized into the institutions created by constitutional democracy. In this context, the study argues that the legitimacy of the Indian Constitution cannot be put strictly within the brackets of representational legitimacy because it may safely claim legitimacy under reason-based, substantive, negligible, and motivated-consent models.
