"American constitutional historians and lawyers generally assume that the current doctrine of judicial supremacy not only has always been the rule of constitutional law but was the original intent of the framers of both the federal and state constitutions. This study disproves the validity of that assumption for state constitutionalism by concentrating on the law of New Hampshire - representative of the law in other jurisdictions - between the years 1789 and 1818. This study shows that the reality for the early republic was both judicial dependence and legislative supremacy." "Despite an attempt to subordinate the judiciary to the will of the citizenry, as represented by the state legislature, Reid finds that judges managed to maintain their autonomy, subject only to the dictates of the law."--BOOK JACKET.