Federal Constitutionalism: State Legislatures in Constitutional Politics

ISBN-13: 9780415832397 / Angielski / Twarda / 2020 / 114 str.

Bradley D. Hays

Opis

State legislatures regularly and recurrently affect constitutional meaning. However, they do so not through legal pathways like constitutional amendment or judicial challenges but by passing resolutions that assert an interpretation different than the one prevailing nationally. These resolutions help rally popular and political resistance and, when successful, alter the wider political environment and constitutional culture. Despite the obvious importance of federalism to American constitutionalism, little is known about the political influence of states in defining the American constitutional order. Through analysis of colonial practices, early American political thought, and case studies of state response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, the embargo crisis, federal spending on internal improvements, the national tariff, civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s, the USA PATRIOT Act, the REAL ID Act, and others, Federal Constitutionalism raises and answers the following questions:

• What is the origin of state participation in political constitutionalism and what function does it serve?
• How do state practices relate to Calhounian nullification and strong states' rights claims?
• How has state participation changed over time as the strength of federalism fluctuated and politics nationalized?

Federal Constitutionalism offers analysis at the intersection of federalism and politics in the fullness of time. In so doing, it provides much needed insight into state involvement in political constitutionalism.

Spis treści

1. Introduction: The (non-legal) Role of States in Constitutional Maintenance  2. Alerting the People: The Origins and Early Practice of State Maintenance  3. Interposing the Protective Shield and Exerting State Authority: The Failures of State Maintenance  4. The Authority to Reject Interpretation: State Maintenance in the 20^th Century  5. Reinvigoration: The Return of Madisonian Maintenance, Nullification, and the Affirmation of Judicial Authority  6. Conclusion: On Development and Constitutionalism

O autorze

Bradley D. Hays is an associate professor of political science at Union College. He received his Ph.D. in government and politics from the University of Maryland, has held faculty positions at the Catholic University of America and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and been a junior fellow at the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College. He writes on constitutional politics and political development. He is also "scholar in residence" at WAMC Northeast Public Radio.