Between Authority & Liberty: State Constitution Making in Revolutionary America - Couverture rigide

Kruman, Marc W.

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0807823023 ISBN 13 : 9780807823026

Editeur : The University of North Carolina Press, 1997

Synopsis

In a major reinterpretation of American political thought in the revolutionary era, Marc Kruman explores the process of constitution making in each of the thirteen original states and shows that the framers created a distinctively American science of politics well before the end of the Confederation era. Suspicious of all government power, state constitution makers greatly feared arbitrary power and mistrusted legislators' ability to represent the people's interests. For these reasons, they broadened the suffrage and introduced frequent elections as a check against legislative self-interest. This analysis challenges Gordon Wood's now-classic argument that, at the beginning of the Revolution, the founders placed great faith in legislators as representatives of the people. According to Kruman, revolutionaries entrusted state constitution making only to members of temporary provincial congresses or constitutional conventions whose task it was to restrict legislative power. At the same time, Americans maintained a belief in the existence of a public good that legislators and magistrates, when properly curbed by one another and by a politically active citizenry, might pursue.
|Explores the process of constitution making in each of the thirteen original states and shows that the framers greatly feared arbitrary power and mistrusted legislators' ability to represent the people's interests. For these reasons, they broadened the suffrage and introduced frequent elections as a check against legislative self-interest. Kruman's analysis challenges Gordon Wood's now-classic argument that, at the beginning of the Revolution, the founders placed great faith in legislators as representatives of the people.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Marc W. Kruman, professor and chair of history at Wayne State University, is author of Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 1836-1865.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: The University of North Carolina Press
• Date d'édition: 1997
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0807823023
• ISBN 13: 9780807823026
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 238
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible