The Civic Constitution

Civic Visions and Struggles in the Path toward Constitutional Democracy

Elizabeth Beaumont (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

368 Seiten

2018
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-069255-1 (ISBN)

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The Civic Constitution provides a compelling case for rethinking the U.S. Constitution and its relations to citizens and social movements. By exploring pivotal struggles over governmental power, individual rights, and the boundaries of citizenship, this book challenges reigning approaches and reveals the profound importance of 'civic founders' who worked to reinvent the constitutional order.

How have generations of Americans debated and shaped the constitutional meanings of liberty, equality, justice, and "We, the people"? What roles have engaged citizens and social movements played in effecting transformative constitutional change? These questions are at the heart of Elizabeth Beaumont's lucid and compelling study. In The Civic Constitution, she traces four crucial eras of constitutional dispute and reinvention: the revolutionaries who catalyzed the Declaration of Independence and first state constitutions; the antifederalists and other critics who influenced the national Constitution and Bill of Rights; the abolitionists who paved the way for the Reconstruction Amendments; and the suffragists whose battles provoked the Nineteenth Amendment.

Beaumont argues that these groups should be recognized as civic founders-and co-founders-of the U.S. Constitution. Through newspaper broadsides, petitions, convention speeches, sermons, boycotts, and protests, these men and women worked to redefine fundamental law. Challenging established authority, they advocated vital new understandings of popular self-governance, rights, liberties, and citizenship. Indeed, though their roles are often overlooked in contemporary debates, these civic reformers not only shaped the legal text and terms of modern constitutionalism, but reconstructed the meaning of civic membership, in terms of both norms and fundamental commitments.

The Civic Constitution is a sweeping work of reinterpretation that speaks to students of American politics, history, and law. This richly documented study offers a keener understanding of the Constitution and a more profound perception of civic identity and democracy itself.

Elizabeth Beaumont is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, where she focuses on democracy, citizenship, and constitutionalism. Previously, she was a Research Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In addition to her work on constitutionalism, she has co-authored books on civic education and political engagement.

Acknowledgments
Key to Abbreviations
Introduction

1 : The Civic Constitution

Part One: Revisiting the 18th Century Founding

2 : Making Liberty Popular
Revolutionaries' "Common Sense" Popular Constitutionalism and New State Republics
3 : The Unfinished Constitution
Quarrels and Claims of "We, the People" in Constitutional Creation and Ratification

Part Two: Civic Struggles to Refound "We, the People" and the Constitution

4 : Pursuing Equality
Abolitionists' Anti-slavery Constitutionalism and Reconstruction
5 : Claiming Justice
Suffragists' Gender Justice Constitutionalism and Transformation
6 : The Complexities of a Civic Founders' Constitution

References
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	19.01.2018
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	155 x 231 mm
Gewicht	540 g
Themenwelt	Recht / Steuern ► EU / Internationales Recht
	Recht / Steuern ► Öffentliches Recht
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Systeme
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-19-069255-3 / 0190692553
ISBN-13	978-0-19-069255-1 / 9780190692551
Zustand	Neuware