Everyman's Constitution

Everyman's Constitution
Author: Howard Jay Graham
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society
Total Pages: 646
Release: 2013-05-31
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0870206354

In 1938, Howard Jay Graham, a deaf law librarian, successfully argued that the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment--ratified after the American Civil War to establish equal protection under the law for all American citizens regardless of race--were motivated by abolitionist fervor, debunking the notion of a corporate conspiracy at the heart of the amendment's wording. For over half a century, the amendment had been used to endow corporations with rights as individuals and thus protect them from state legislation. By 1968, when Everyman's Constitution was first published, the Fourteenth Amendment had become a tool for the incorporation of the Bill of Rights to apply to all American citizens. The essays in this reprinted edition are still relevant as the nation continues to interpret our framing legislation in light of the concerns of today and to balance citizens' rights against those of corporations. Howard Jay Graham was a law librarian brought in by the NAACP's legal team to write a brief on the Fourteenth Amendment for the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. Though the Supreme Court justices ruled in favor of the NAACP based on the sociological rather than historical evidence it provided, Graham's work, published in various law journals over several decades, contributed greatly to the ongoing interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Age of Betrayal

Age of Betrayal
Author: Jack Beatty
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2008-04-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1400032423

Age of Betrayal is a brilliant reconsideration of America's first Gilded Age, when war-born dreams of freedom and democracy died of their impossibility. Focusing on the alliance between government and railroads forged by bribes and campaign contributions, Jack Beatty details the corruption of American political culture that, in the words of Rutherford B. Hayes, transformed “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people” into “a government by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations.” A passionate, gripping, scandalous and sorrowing history of the triumph of wealth over commonwealth.

The Fourth Amendment

The Fourth Amendment
Author: Michael J. Z. Mannheimer
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 431
Release: 2023-08-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0472903713

Police are required to obey the law. While that seems obvious, courts have lost track of that requirement due to misinterpreting the two constitutional provisions governing police conduct: the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Fourth Amendment forbids "unreasonable searches and seizures" and is the source of most constitutional constraints on policing. Although that provision technically applies only to the federal government, the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in the wake of the Civil War, has been deemed to apply the Fourth Amendment to the States. This book contends that the courts’ misinterpretation of these provisions has led them to hold federal and state law enforcement mistakenly to the same constitutional standards. The Fourth Amendment was originally understood as a federalism, or “states’ rights,” provision that, in effect, required federal agents to adhere to state law when searching or seizing. Thus, applying the same constraint to the States is impossible. Instead, the Fourteenth Amendment was originally understood in part as requiring that state officials (1) adhere to state law, (2) not discriminate, and (3) not be granted excessive discretion by legislators. These principles should guide judicial review of modern policing. Instead, constitutional constraints on policing are too strict and too forgiving at the same time. In this book, Michael J.Z. Mannheimer calls for a reimagination of what modern policing could look like based on the original understandings of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights

We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights
Author: Adam Winkler
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
Total Pages: 485
Release: 2018-02-27
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0871403846

National Book Award for Nonfiction Finalist National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A PBS “Now Read This” Book Club Selection Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Economist and the Boston Globe A landmark exposé and “deeply engaging legal history” of one of the most successful, yet least known, civil rights movements in American history (Washington Post). In a revelatory work praised as “excellent and timely” (New York Times Book Review, front page), Adam Winkler, author of Gunfight, once again makes sense of our fraught constitutional history in this incisive portrait of how American businesses seized political power, won “equal rights,” and transformed the Constitution to serve big business. Uncovering the deep roots of Citizens United, he repositions that controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision as the capstone of a centuries-old battle for corporate personhood. “Tackling a topic that ought to be at the heart of political debate” (Economist), Winkler surveys more than four hundred years of diverse cases—and the contributions of such legendary legal figures as Daniel Webster, Roger Taney, Lewis Powell, and even Thurgood Marshall—to reveal that “the history of corporate rights is replete with ironies” (Wall Street Journal). We the Corporations is an uncompromising work of history to be read for years to come.

Originalism in American Law and Politics

Originalism in American Law and Politics
Author: Johnathan O'Neill
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2005-07-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801881114

This book explains how the debate over originalism emerged from the interaction of constitutional theory, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and American political development. Refuting the contention that originalism is a recent concoction of political conservatives like Robert Bork, Johnathan O'Neill asserts that recent appeals to the origin of the Constitution in Supreme Court decisions and commentary, especially by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, continue an established pattern in American history. Originalism in American Law and Politics is distinguished by its historical approach to the topic. Drawing on constitutional commentary and treatises, Supreme Court and lower federal court opinions, congressional hearings, and scholarly monographs, O'Neill's work will be valuable to historians, academic lawyers, and political scientists.

Origins of the New South, 1877–1913

Origins of the New South, 1877–1913
Author: C. Vann Woodward
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 676
Release: 1981-08-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780807100196

Winner of the Bancroft Prize After more than two decades, Origins of the New South is still recognized both as a classic in regional historiography and as the most perceptive account yet written on the period which spawned the New South. Historian Sheldon Hackney recently summed it up this way: “The pyramid still stands. Origins of the New South has survived relatively untarnished through twenty years of productive scholarship, including the eras of consensus and of the new radicalism. . . . Woodward recognizes both the likelihood of failure and the necessity of struggle. It is this profound ambiguity which makes his work so interesting. Like the myth of Sisyphus, Origins of the New South still speaks to our condition.” This enlarged edition contains a new preface by the author and a critical essay on recent works by Charles B. Dew.

A Practical Companion to the Constitution

A Practical Companion to the Constitution
Author: Jethro K. Lieberman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 810
Release: 2023-07-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520340655

This is the most comprehensive and readable one-volume reference book in print, accessible to lay readers and specialists alike, on the meaning of the American Constitution as the Supreme Court has interpreted it. It is an indispensable tool for students and lay persons who want to understand today's constitutional controversies and their background in our history. It is equally useful to lawyers and other specialists who seek quick reviews of constitutional issues with immediate reference to cases for further research. Unlike conventional treatises that discuss the Constitution clause by clause or under a few broad concepts, this book uniquely treats every aspect of the Constitution and every constitutional topic in alphabetical order, in more than 1,000 short essays. It is extensively cross-referenced and exhaustively indexed, so that even a reader with only a minimal notion of the Constitution or constitutional law can quickly find clear answers to questions about pressing issues of the day. Among the other unique features: a set of introductory essays on the background of the Constitution and the many difficulties of interpreting it; a concordance to each word and phrase in the Constitution; a year-by-year chronology of justices who have served on the Supreme Court; and a table of the more than 2,650 Supreme Court cases from 1792 to the present referred to in the book, listing the vote, the author of the majority opinion, the concurring and dissenting justices, and the length of the opinions.

A Machine That Would Go of Itself

A Machine That Would Go of Itself
Author: Russell Fraser
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 582
Release: 2017-07-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351534939

In this volume, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen explores the U.S. Constitution's place in the public consciousness and its role as a symbol in American life, from ratification in 1788 to our own time. As he examines what the Constitution has meant to the American people (perceptions and misperceptions, uses and abuses, knowledge and ignorance), Kammen shows that although there are recurrent declarations of reverence most of us neither know nor fully understand our Constitution. How did this gap between ideal and reality come about? To explain it, Kammen examines the complex and contradictory feelings about the Constitution that emerged during its preparation and that have been with us ever since. He begins with our confusion as to the kind of Union we created, especially with regard to how much sovereignty the states actually surrendered to the central government. This confusion is the source of the constitutional crisis that led to the Civil War and its aftermath. Kammen also describes and analyzes changing perceptions of the differences and similarities between the British and American constitutions; turn-of-the-century debates about states' rights versus national authority; and disagreements about how easy or difficult it ought to be to amend the Constitution. Moving into the twentieth century, he notes the development of a "cult of the Constitution" following World War I, and the conflict over policy issues that persisted despite a shared commitment to the Constitution.