American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War

Description

American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War challenges traditional American constitutional history, theory and jurisprudence that sees today's constitutionalism as linked by an unbroken chain to the 1787 Federal constitutional convention. American Sovereigns examines the idea that after the American Revolution, a collectivity - the people - would rule as the sovereign. Heated political controversies within the states and at the national level over what it meant that the people were the sovereign and how that collective sovereign could express its will were not resolved in 1776, in 1787, or prior to the Civil War. The idea of the people as the sovereign both unified and divided Americans in thinking about government and the basis of the Union. Today's constitutionalism is not a natural inheritance, but the product of choices Americans made between shifting understandings about themselves as a collective sovereign.

Christian G. Fritz is a professor of law at the University of New Mexico School of Law, where he has held both the Dickason and Weihofen chairs. Fritz has a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, and a J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of Law. He is the author of Federal Justice in California: The Court of Ogden Hoffman, 1851-1891 (1991), a path-breaking work that analyzes the operation of the first federal district court in San Francisco. Fritz delivered the 2002 Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., lecture at the Oklahoma City University School of Law. Professor Fritz is a member of the American Society for Legal History and the American Historical Association, and has served on the editorial boards of several law and history journals.

"This is a superb and radical book, radical in the sense that it goes to the roots of the American constitutional tradition, pushes aside the crusty generations of constitution worship that have enshrined the federal constitution as a fixed, settled and static resolution of the nation's constitutional tradition and complicates matters enormously." Ronald Formisano, University of Kentucky, Lexington "Professor Fritz's American Sovereigns tells a complicated story of constitutional development from the period of the Revolution to the Civil War. It is not a conventional account that takes its beginning from 1787 and a focus on the Federal Constitution; rather it offers an intimate account of change that reckons with the extraordinary role of the people as sovereigns. To be sure, Fritz discusses many questions that usually enter accounts of constitutions, but he gives these questions an unusual twist, and adds a fresh perspective through analysis of state constitutions, federal action with constitutional meanings; popular behavior in extraordinary events such as the Whiskey Rebellion and the Rhode Island crisis. In all of this intricate story, the people as sovereigns, a much contested proposition-as he demonstrates-serves to give his study its coherence. His book is not only a revisionist account; it is a beautifully written piece of history that illuminates a supremely important field." Robert Middlekauff, University of California, Berkeley "AMERICAN SOVEREIGNS is a welcome addition to the literature on constitutional theory, legal history, and American political development. While the book is dense, it is nevertheless readable and presents unique criticisms and corrections, specifically concerning the literatures on popular constitutionalism and extra-judicial constitutionalism." -Justin Wert, Law and Politics Book Review "Fritz's purpose in this painstakingly researched and richly rewarding study is to show that a number of events in the early American Republic can only be fully understood by viewing them as episodes in a longstanding debate over competing conceptions of collective sovereignty...Fritz succeeds admirably in the current work in offering an original and insightful analysis of competing conceptions of popular sovereignty through the mid-nineteenth century..." -John Dinan, H-Law "In one of the most significant contributions to rethinking the nature and function of constitutionalism that this reviewer has encountered in many years, promising historian-lawyer Fritz (Univ. of New Mexico) has taken a new look at the role of popular sovereignty in conflicts over the nature of constitutionalism in the US. The author's contention is essentially that historians have extended Gordon Wood's argument (in The Creation of the American Republic, CH, Oct'69) about the centrality of popular sovereignty in creating the 1787 Constitution to be reflective of American attitudes about popular sovereignty and constitutional change over the centuries. That is simply not so, Fritz shows through an elegant analysis of constitutional conflicts between the Revolution and the Civil War. His implicit message is that the power of the people to change the terms of the Constitution is always a lively, contested issue. This is a finding of immense importance for understanding the current constitutional impasse in the US over the war power, to cite only one example. A highly accessible, nicely produced, and beautifully researched and written book that is a must read for historians and teachers of public law." -Stanley N. Katz, Princeton University, Choice "American Sovereigns will probably become a primer for all who study the U.S. Constitution. It provides a superb analysis of the legal concepts and politics behind the creation, testing, and modification of that document before 1860...It should be a must read for scholars of that era." Sheldon Avenius, History: Review of New Books