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'To Save the People from Themselves': The Emergence of American Judicial Review and the Transformation of Constitutions

'To Save the People from Themselves': The Emergence of American Judicial Review and the Transformation of Constitutions

Author: Robert J. Steinfeld
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108839235
Published In: September 2021
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Description
Contents

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In this expansive history, Robert J. Steinfeld offers a thorough re-interpretation of the origins of American judicial review and the central role it quickly came to play in the American constitutional system. Beginning with Privy Council review of American colonial legislation, the book goes on to provide detailed descriptions of the character of the first American constitutions, showing that they drew heavily on traditional Anglo/American constitutional assumptions, which treated legislatures as the primary interpreters of constitutions. Steinfeld then expertly analyses the central role lawyers and judges played in transforming these assumptions, creating the practice and doctrine of American judicial review in a half dozen state cases during the 1780s. The book concludes by showing that the ideas formulated during those years shaped critical decisions taken by the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which turned the novel practice into a permanent, if still deeply controversial, feature of the American constitutional system.

Introduction

Part I. Legislatures and Legislation under the First American Constitutions:

1. The largely 'legislative' character of the ('Horizontal' and 'Vertical') constitutional checks placed on colonial legislatures

2. The traditional nature of the first written constitutions and the role of legislatures as their primary expounders

3. Restoring 'legislative' review of the laws: the New York Constitution of 1777

Part II. The Emergence Of American Judicial Review:

1779-1787: I.

1779-1782

4. Supplementing traditional legislative 'revision' with judicial review: the New Jersey case of Holmes V. Walton, 1779-1780

5. The debate over judicial review in the Virginia court of appeals: the case of the prisoners, 1782

II.

1784-1787:

6. The reappearance of 'vertical' judicial review in the case of Rutgers v. Waddington, New York, 1784

7. The successful battle to establish judicial review in New Hampshire: the ten pound act cases, 1786-87, and their aftermath

8. Judicial review and legislative supremacy in Rhode Island: the case of Trevett v. Weeden, 1786, and its aftermath

9. The struggle between traditional constitutionalism and the constitution of judicial review in North Carolina: the case of Bayard v. Singleton, 1786-87, and its aftermath

Part III. Judicial Review at the Federal Convention:

10. Judicial review and the fate of traditional constitutionalism at the federal convention