History of Republicanism and Constitutional Thought

Coordinating Professor: Conf.univ.dr. Ioan STANOMIR Analyzing the concept of comparative constitutionalism, I should mention the key element -constitutions, which are often designed to provide the exercise and the balance of power, employing such devices as bicameralism, executive veto power, special majorities, and, nowadays, constitutional adjudication. 1 The purpose of my research paper is to examine the way in which the origins of modern American constitutionalism are reflected in the nowadays framework of constitutional process. Tocqueville was the first to notice that political controversy in America tends to become legal controversy. This is true not just of particular controversies but also of the largest issues of the character and sources of political authority in America. Debate over the foundations of American

The New England Quarterly, 2020

Jonathan Gienapp, Stanford University, reflects on the historiographic and scholarly contributions of Gordon Wood's The Creation of the American Republic.

This course will investigate three themes. (1) The political philosophies which contributed to the creation and ratification of the United States Constitution. Here, we will examine the historical circumstances necessitating its creation, several specific proposed plans of representation, and more general reflections on republicanism and federalism, including separation and balancing of powers, and the role of factions, private interests, and public interests (2) Thoughts on the nature and meaning of the United States Constitution. Here, we will analyze an economic interpretation of the Constitution and two divergent theories about how it is to be interpreted by the judiciaryconstitutional originalism and legal realism. (3) The philosophy of historical inquiry and interpretation. Here, we will examine two methodologies in order to enrich our understanding of the nature of interpreting a text from the past and applying it in the present.

1989

The Review of Politics, 1998

Cuestiones Políticas

The authors of the article have studied the causes of the American Civil War with due regard to the history of constitutional law. This research is based on several political, economic, legal and cultural factors. The authors used the method of analyzing historical documents. After analyzing judicial precedents and global historical trends, they have concluded that America's constitutional institutes lost their effectiveness and became a weapon in the hands of struggling parties during the constitutional crisis. As a result, the compromise system of the early nineteenth century became a new state and legal structure.

Australian Journal of Politics & History , 2020

For almost four decades preceding the 1787-88 ratification debates — during which American Federalists drew severe criticism from the Anti-Federalists — Enlightenment politics in Europe had been undergoing equally severe criticism from Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Though largely unaware of each other, both of these critics advanced distinctive republican theories based on civic virtue and individual liberty. Rousseau argued for a republic which would require the near-total alienation of retained natural rights, abstention from bourgeois commerce, and complete conformity to the general will. The Anti-Federalists, by contrast, envisioned a republic based on retained natural rights, one that would reconcile the communitarian spirit of antiquity with the commercial values and individual rights of modernity. By comparing and contrasting the most salient features of these contending visions, whose theoretical trajectories are — I argue — crucially opposed, we can glimpse the inherent conflicting requisites of republican government and therewith some of the enduring dilemmas of republican theory.

“Constitutionalism, Law & Politics II: American Constitutionalism” is the gateway course to the Constitutional Studies program at Notre Dame. It attempts to understand the nature of the American regime and her most important principles. It explores the American Constitution and the philosophical and political ideas that animated its creation and subsequent development. It proceeds by examining select statesmen and critical historical periods—specifically, the Founding era, Lincoln and the slavery crisis, and the Progressives.

This dissertation examines the representational theory of James Madison – first in the context of the literature on representation more generally, then in the context of Madison’s larger project of securing a free and stable republican government in a democratic society, and lastly in the context of the Supreme Court’s representational jurisprudence. This examination begins by challenging Hanna Pitkin’s long-standing dismissal of Hobbes’s theory of representation and the methodology by which she comes to define the ends of political representation. I contend that the ends of representation must be connected with the ends of the regime in order to determine whether a regime is, in the words of Pitkin, providing substantive representation. I then situate my reading of Madison’s works on representation within the larger, and often conflicting, fields of literature on Madison and his political thought before demonstrating that Madison’s understanding of representation both owes a significant intellectual debt to the French Enlightenment – a debt that has only recently begun to enter the awareness of modern Madisonian scholarship through the exceptional work of Colleen Sheehan – and offers a unique contribution to political theory with his synthesis of French and English political thought to produce a theory of representation that can secure liberty and justice in a levelled society. Lastly, I examine the historical development of two competing, and contradictory strands of representational jurisprudence, discuss the social impact of the Court’s understanding of the purpose of representation, and indicate possible solutions to the conflict between these two lines of jurisprudence derived from Madison’s theory of representation.