Fault Lines In The Constitution

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Fault Lines in the Constitution

Author : Cynthia Levinson,Sanford Levinson
Publisher : Peachtree Publishers
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2017-09-01
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 9781682630242

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Fault Lines in the Constitution by Cynthia Levinson,Sanford Levinson Pdf

Many of the political issues we struggle with today have their roots in the US Constitution. Husband-and-wife team Cynthia and Sanford Levinson take readers back to the creation of this historic document and discuss how contemporary problems were first introduced—then they offer possible solutions. Think Electoral College, gerrymandering, even the Senate. Many of us take these features in our system for granted. But they came about through haggling in an overheated room in 1787, and we’re still experiencing the ramifications. Each chapter in this timely and thoughtful exploration of the Constitution’s creation begins with a story—all but one of them true—that connects directly back to a section of the document that forms the basis of our society and government. From the award-winning team, Cynthia Levinson, children’s book author, and Sanford Levinson, constitutional law scholar, Fault Lines in the Constitution will encourage exploration and discussion from young and old readers alike.

Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Graphic Novel

Author : Cynthia Levinson,Sanford Levinson
Publisher : First Second
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2020-09-22
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN : 1250211611

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Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Graphic Novel by Cynthia Levinson,Sanford Levinson Pdf

The latest volume in our World Citizen Comics series, Fault Lines in the Constitution teaches readers how this founding document continues to shape modern American society. In 1787, After 116 days of heated debates and bitter arguments, the United States Constitution was created. This imperfect document set forth America’s guiding principles, but it would also introduce some of today's most contentious political issues—from gerrymandering, to the Electoral College, to presidential impeachment. With colorful art, compelling discourse, and true stories from America's past and present, Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Graphic Novel sheds light on how today's political struggles have their origins in the decisions of our Founding Fathers. Children’s book author Cynthia Levinson, constitutional law scholar Sanford Levinson, and artist Ally Shwed deftly illustrate how contemporary problems arose from this founding document—and then they offer possible solutions.

Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974

Author : Kevin M. Kruse,Julian E. Zelizer
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2019-01-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9780393634549

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Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974 by Kevin M. Kruse,Julian E. Zelizer Pdf

"A gripping and troubling account of the origins of our turbulent times.” —Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States When—and how—did America become so polarized? In this masterful history, leading historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer uncover the origins of our current moment. It all starts in 1974 with the Watergate crisis, the OPEC oil embargo, desegregation busing riots in Boston, and the wind-down of the Vietnam War. What follows is the story of our own lifetimes. It is the story of ever-widening historical fault lines over economic inequality, race, gender, and sexual norms firing up a polarized political landscape. It is also the story of profound transformations of the media and our political system fueling the fire. Kruse and Zelizer’s Fault Lines is a master class in national divisions nearly five decades in the making.

The Good State

Author : A. C. Grayling
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 197 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2020-02-27
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781786077196

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The Good State by A. C. Grayling Pdf

The foundations upon which our democracies stand are inherently flawed, vulnerable to corrosion from within. What is the remedy? A. C. Grayling makes the case for a clear, consistent, principled and written constitution, and sets out the reforms necessary – among them addressing the imbalance of power between government and Parliament, imposing fixed terms for MPs, introducing proportional representation and lowering the voting age to 16 (the age at which you can marry, gamble, join the army and must pay taxes if you work) – to ensure the intentions of such a constitution could not be subverted or ignored. As democracies around the world show signs of decay, the issue of what makes a good state, one that is democratic in the fullest sense of the word, could not be more important. To take just one example: by the simplest of measures, neither Britain nor the United States can claim to be truly democratic. The most basic tenet of democracy is that no voice be louder than any other. Yet in our ‘first past the post’ electoral systems a voter supporting a losing candidate is unrepresented, his or her voice unequal to one supporting a winning candidate, who frequently does not gain a majority of the votes cast. This is just one of a number of problems, all of them showing that democratic reform is a necessity in our contemporary world.

Constitutionalism in Context

Author : David S. Law
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 611 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2022-02-17
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781108427098

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Constitutionalism in Context by David S. Law Pdf

A broad-ranging, interdisciplinary, and context-rich exploration of the fields of constitutional studies and comparative constitutional law for research and teaching.

The People’s Constitution

Author : John F. Kowal
Publisher : The New Press
Page : 493 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2021-09-21
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781620975626

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The People’s Constitution by John F. Kowal Pdf

The 233-year story of how the American people have taken an imperfect constitution—the product of compromises and an artifact of its time—and made it more democratic Who wrote the Constitution? That’s obvious, we think: fifty-five men in Philadelphia in 1787. But much of the Constitution was actually written later, in a series of twenty-seven amendments enacted over the course of two centuries. The real history of the Constitution is the astonishing story of how subsequent generations have reshaped our founding document amid some of the most colorful, contested, and controversial battles in American political life. It’s a story of how We the People have improved our government’s structure and expanded the scope of our democracy during eras of transformational social change. The People’s Constitution is an elegant, sobering, and masterly account of the evolution of American democracy. From the addition of the Bill of Rights, a promise made to save the Constitution from near certain defeat, to the post–Civil War battle over the Fourteenth Amendment, from the rise and fall of the “noble experiment” of Prohibition to the defeat and resurgence of an Equal Rights Amendment a century in the making, The People’s Constitution is the first book of its kind: a vital guide to America’s national charter, and an alternative history of the continuing struggle to realize the Framers’ promise of a more perfect union.

The Constitution in Jeopardy

Author : Russ Feingold,Peter Prindiville
Publisher : Hachette UK
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2022-08-30
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781541701540

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The Constitution in Jeopardy by Russ Feingold,Peter Prindiville Pdf

A former U.S. senator joins a legal scholar to examine a hushed effort to radically change our Constitution, offering a warning and a way forward. Over the last two decades, a fringe plan to call a convention under the Constitution's amendment mechanism—the nation's first ever—has inched through statehouses. Delegates, like those in Philadelphia two centuries ago, would exercise nearly unlimited authority to draft changes to our fundamental law, potentially altering anything from voting and free speech rights to regulatory and foreign policy powers. Such a watershed moment would present great danger, and for some, great power. In this important book, Feingold and Prindiville distill extensive legal and historical research and examine the grave risks inherent in this effort. But they also consider the role of constitutional amendment in modern life. Though many focus solely on judicial and electoral avenues for change, such an approach is at odds with a cornerstone ideal of the Founding: that the People make constitutional law, directly. In an era defined by faction and rejection of long-held norms, The Constitution in Jeopardy examines the nature of constitutional change and asks urgent questions about what American democracy is, and should be.

Fault Lines in the Constitution

Author : Cynthia Levinson,Sanford Levinson
Publisher : Holiday House
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2019-09-03
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 9781682631775

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Fault Lines in the Constitution by Cynthia Levinson,Sanford Levinson Pdf

A noted children's nonfiction author and one of the nation's foremost constitutional scholars team up to create an essential book on the United States Constitution for everyone grappling with today's most urgent political issues. Many of the political issues we struggle with today have their roots in one place—the U.S. Constitution. Fault Lines in the Constitution takes readers back to the creation of this historic document and reveals how many of the problems that trouble us today—such as voting rights, the Electoral College, gerrymandering—were first introduced. Cynthia and Sanford Levinson explain the unexpected ramifications of decisions make in 1787 and explore possible solutions found in the constitutions of states and other countries. Each chapter begins with a story―all but one of them true―that connects directly back to a section of the document that forms the basis of our society and government. Informative sidebars and graphics run throughout along with a timeline and bibliography.

Re: Constitutions

Author : Beka Feathers
Publisher : First Second
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2021-08-03
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN : 9781250847836

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Re: Constitutions by Beka Feathers Pdf

The next volume in the World Citizen Comics series, Re: Constitutions explains the role constitutions play in how government is structured and provides context for the modern issues that arise from these documents. Marcus is stumped by a summer assignment: to write an essay on what it means to be a citizen. He’s surprised to hear from people in his community that constitutions play an important role when it comes to citizenship—they can even affect whether you feel like you belong in your country or not. From a Kosovo Albanian neighbor to a Rwandan exchange student, and even in his own family history, Marcus discovers stories of how constitutions—including the U.S. Constitution—shape the political landscape and our daily lives. From Beka Feathers, an expert in post-conflict institution building, and Kasia Babis, an accomplished political cartoonist, comes a graphic novel that gives context to the modern issues that arise from constitutions. With historical examples from all over the world, Re: Constitutions examines how this essential document defines a nation’s identity and the rights of its citizens. This book is part of the World Citizen Comics series, a bold line of civics-focused graphic novels that equip readers to be engaged citizens and informed voters.

We've Got a Job

Author : Cynthia Levinson
Publisher : Holiday House
Page : 411 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2018-09-18
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 9781682631188

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We've Got a Job by Cynthia Levinson Pdf

The inspiring story of the 1963 Birmingham Children's March as seen through the eyes of four young people at the center of the action. The 1963 Birmingham Children's March was a turning point in American civil rights history. Black Americans had had enough of segregation and police brutality, but with their lives and jobs at stake, most adults were hesitant to protest the city's racist culture. So the fight for civil rights lay in the hands of children like Audrey Hendricks, Wash Booker, James Stewart, and Arnetta Streeter. We've Got a Job tells the little-known story of the four thousand Black elementary, middle, and high school students who answered Dr. Martin Luther King's call to "fill the jails." Between May 2 and May 11, 1963, these young people voluntarily went to jail, drawing national attention to the cause, helping bring about the repeal of segregation laws, and inspiring thousands of other young people to demand their rights. Drawing on her extensive research and in-depth interviews with participants, award-winning author Cynthia Levinson recreates the events of the Birmingham Children's March from a new and very personal perspective. Archival photography and informational sidebars throughout. Back matter includes an afterword, author's note, timeline, map, and bibliography.

Fault Lines of Globalization

Author : Hans Lindahl
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 299 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2013-09-26
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780199601684

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Fault Lines of Globalization by Hans Lindahl Pdf

The question whether and how boundaries might individuate and thereby be constitutive features of any imaginable legal order has yet to be addressed in a systematic and comprehensive manner by legal and political theory. This book seeks to address this important omission, providing an original contribution to the debate about law in a global setting. Against the widely endorsed assumption that we are now moving towards law without boundaries, it argues that every imaginable legal order, global or otherwise, is bounded in space, time, membership, and content. The book is built up around three main insights. Firstly, that legal orders can best be understood as a form of joint action in which authorities mediate and uphold who ought to do what, where, and when with a view to realising the normative point of acting together. Secondly, that behaviour can call into question the boundaries that determine who ought to do what, where and when: a-legality. Thirdly, that this a-legality reveals boundaries as marking a limit and, to a lesser or greater extent, a fault line of the respective legal order. Legal boundaries reveal ways of ordering the who, what, where, and when of behaviour which have been excluded, yet which remain within the range of practical possibilities accessible to the collective: limits. However legal boundaries also intimate an order which exceeds the range of possibilities accessible to that collective - the fault line of the respective legal order. Careful analysis of a wide range of legal orders, including nomadism, Roman law, classical international law, ius gentium, multinationals, cyberlaw, lex mercatoria, the EU, global regimes of human rights, and space law validates this thesis. What sense, then, can we make of the normativity of the law, if there can be no inclusion without exclusion? Arguing that legal and political theories misunderstand how legal boundaries do their work of including and excluding, the book develops a normative theory of legal order which is alternative to both communitarianism and cosmopolitanism.

The Strategic Constitution

Author : Robert D. Cooter
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 435 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2020-06-30
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780691214504

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The Strategic Constitution by Robert D. Cooter Pdf

Making, amending, and interpreting constitutions is a political game that can yield widespread suffering or secure a nation's liberty and prosperity. Given these high stakes, Robert Cooter argues that constitutional theory should trouble itself less with literary analysis and arguments over founders' intentions and focus much more on the real-world consequences of various constitutional provisions and choices. Pooling the best available theories from economics and political science, particularly those developed from game theory, Cooter's economic analysis of constitutions fundamentally recasts a field of growing interest and dramatic international importance. By uncovering the constitutional incentives that influence citizens, politicians, administrators, and judges, Cooter exposes fault lines in alternative forms of democracy: unitary versus federal states, deep administration versus many elections, parliamentary versus presidential systems, unicameral versus bicameral legislatures, common versus civil law, and liberty versus equality rights. Cooter applies an efficiency test to these alternatives, asking how far they satisfy the preferences of citizens for laws and public goods. To answer Cooter contrasts two types of democracy, which he defines as competitive government. The center of the political spectrum defeats the extremes in "median democracy," whereas representatives of all the citizens bargain over laws and public goods in "bargain democracy." Bargaining can realize all the gains from political trades, or bargaining can collapse into an unstable contest of redistribution. States plagued by instability and contests over redistribution should move towards median democracy by increasing transaction costs and reducing the power of the extremes. Specifically, promoting median versus bargain democracy involves promoting winner-take-all elections versus proportional representation, two parties versus multiple parties, referenda versus representative democracy, and special governments versus comprehensive governments. This innovative theory will have ramifications felt across national and disciplinary borders, and will be debated by a large audience, including the growing pool of economists interested in how law and politics shape economic policy, political scientists using game theory or specializing in constitutional law, and academic lawyers. The approach will also garner attention from students of political science, law, and economics, as well as policy makers working in and with new democracies where constitutions are being written and refined.

It's Even Worse Than It Looks

Author : Thomas E. Mann,Norman J. Ornstein
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2016-04-05
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780465096732

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It's Even Worse Than It Looks by Thomas E. Mann,Norman J. Ornstein Pdf

Hyperpartisanship is as old as American democracy. But now, acrimony is not confined to a moment; it's a permanent state of affairs and has seeped into every part of the political process. Identifying the overriding problems that have led Congress—and the United States—to the brink of institutional collapse, It's Even Worse Than It Looks profoundly altered the debate about why America's government has become so dysfunctional. Through a new preface and afterword, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein bring the story forward, examining the 2012 presidential campaign and exploring the prospects of a less dysfunctional government. As provocative and controversial as ever, It's Even Worse Than It Looks will continue to set the terms of our political debate in the years to come.

The US Constitution of 1791 and the Fugitive Slave Clause

Author : Norman Coles
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
Page : 154 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2019-11-20
Category : History
ISBN : 9781802071771

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The US Constitution of 1791 and the Fugitive Slave Clause by Norman Coles Pdf

The US Constitutions, both of 1788 and 1791, contain at Article IV (para 2, Section 3) a clause generally called The Fugitive Slave Clause. This Clause was held to make it legal to both recapture and return fugitive slaves to the states where they had lived or the owner, even if he or she resisted. The Clause was held to be constitutionally legal by lawyers and legal commentators. Even Lincoln as a lawyer thought the Clause was constitutionally legal, even though he thought slavery evil. Norman Coles presents arguments which show that the Clause has at least two (and possibly three) meanings. The Clause may not refer to slaves at all, when it is interpreted in accord with its actual phrasing rather than its intended meaning promoting the wishes of owners. Alvan Stewart, a renowned Abolitionist lawyer, argued that the Clause was inconsistent with that part of the 1791 US Constitution which is Amendment IV, reasoning premised on the definition of person, which applied to the two dated Constitutions; and with regard to the Fourth Amendment (1791) where slavery (unless a result of crime and jury trial) was illegal under US law. Stewarts arguments are about Constitutional principles, not the practical consequences of believing the Clause was law. Stewarts reasoning is penetrating; arguments relating to ambiguity and legal jargon are superseded by the logical consequence of the fact that if the Clause is about fugitive slaves, its legality rests on false assumptions. Herein lay the potential to avoid an historical tragedy. In the course of time legal and political champions, in conjunction with a growing number of US States, favoured laws which barred slave-hunting, but in the interim legal inadequacy resulted in the unnecessary continuation of slave-holding. This publication is a fundamental reconsideration of the intertwining of American History and American Constitutional Law.

The Cycles of Constitutional Time

Author : Jack M. Balkin
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 246 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2020-08-01
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780197531013

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The Cycles of Constitutional Time by Jack M. Balkin Pdf

What will happen to American democracy? The nation's past holds vital clues for understanding where we are now and where we are headed. In The Cycles of Constitutional Time, the eminent constitutional theorist Jack Balkin explains how America's constitutional system changes through the interplay among three cycles: the rise and fall of dominant political parties, the waxing and waning of political polarization, and alternating episodes of constitutional decay and constitutional renewal. If America's politics seems especially fraught today, it is because we are nearing the end of the Republican Party's political dominance, at the height of a long cycle of political polarization, and suffering from an advanced case of what he calls "constitutional rot." In fact, when people talk about constitutional crisis, Balkin explains, they are usually describing constitutional rot--the historical process through which republics become less representative and less devoted to the common good. Brought on by increasing economic inequality and loss of trust, constitutional rot threatens our constitutional system. But Balkin offers a message of hope: We have been through these cycles before, and we will get through them again. He describes what our politics will look like as polarization lessens and constitutional rot recedes. Balkin also explains how the cycles of constitutional time shape the work of the federal courts and theories about constitutional interpretation. He shows how the political parties have switched sides on judicial review not once but twice in the twentieth century, and what struggles over judicial review will look like in the coming decades. Drawing on literatures from history, law, and political science, this is a fascinating ride through American history with important lessons for the present and the future.