This work provides a comprehensive introduction to the phenomenon of state expansion of federally guaranteed constitutional liberties. In a series of constitutional provisions, reports and debates from state constitutional conventions, state and federal cases, litigation briefs, and scholarly articles drawn from the fields of law and political science, it traces the jurisprudential foundations for an independent state constitutional law. The author illustrates the range of liberty-expanding constitutional rulings by state courts, and sets out the key debates that presently engage judges and...

Election campaigns ought to be serious occasions in the life of a democratic polity. For citizens of a democracy, an election is a time to take stock-to reexamine our beliefs; to review our understanding of our own interests; to ponder the place of those interests in the larger social order; and to contemplate, and if necessary to revise, our understanding of how our commitments are best translated into governmental policy-or so we profess to believe.

Americans, however, are haunted by the fear that our election campaigns fall far short of the ideal to which we aspire. The typical modern...