The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction

Nonfiction, Reference & Language, Law
Cover of the book The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction by Professor Akhil Reed Amar, Yale University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Professor Akhil Reed Amar ISBN: 9780300127089
Publisher: Yale University Press Publication: October 1, 2008
Imprint: Yale University Press Language: English
Author: Professor Akhil Reed Amar
ISBN: 9780300127089
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication: October 1, 2008
Imprint: Yale University Press
Language: English
Are the deep insights of Hugo Black, William Brennan, and Felix Frankfurter that have defined our cherished Bill of Rights fatally flawed? With meticulous historical scholarship and elegant legal interpretation a leading scholar of Constitutional law boldly answers yes as he explodes conventional wisdom about the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution in this incisive new account of our most basic charter of liberty. Akhil Reed Amar brilliantly illuminates in rich detail not simply the text, structure, and history of individual clauses of the 1789 Bill, but their intended relationships to each other and to other constitutional provisions. Amar's corrective does not end there, however, for as his powerful narrative proves, a later generation of antislavery activists profoundly changed the meaning of the Bill in the Reconstruction era. With the Fourteenth Amendment, Americans underwent a new birth of freedom that transformed the old Bill of Rights.
We have as a result a complex historical document originally designed to protect the people against self-interested government and revised by the Fourteenth Amendment to guard minority against majority. In our continuing battles over freedom of religion and expression, arms bearing, privacy, states' rights, and popular sovereignty, Amar concludes, we must hearken to both the Founding Fathers who created the Bill and their sons and daughters who reconstructed it.
Amar's landmark work invites citizens to a deeper understanding of their Bill of Rights and will set the basic terms of debate about it for modern lawyers, jurists, and historians for years to come.
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Are the deep insights of Hugo Black, William Brennan, and Felix Frankfurter that have defined our cherished Bill of Rights fatally flawed? With meticulous historical scholarship and elegant legal interpretation a leading scholar of Constitutional law boldly answers yes as he explodes conventional wisdom about the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution in this incisive new account of our most basic charter of liberty. Akhil Reed Amar brilliantly illuminates in rich detail not simply the text, structure, and history of individual clauses of the 1789 Bill, but their intended relationships to each other and to other constitutional provisions. Amar's corrective does not end there, however, for as his powerful narrative proves, a later generation of antislavery activists profoundly changed the meaning of the Bill in the Reconstruction era. With the Fourteenth Amendment, Americans underwent a new birth of freedom that transformed the old Bill of Rights.
We have as a result a complex historical document originally designed to protect the people against self-interested government and revised by the Fourteenth Amendment to guard minority against majority. In our continuing battles over freedom of religion and expression, arms bearing, privacy, states' rights, and popular sovereignty, Amar concludes, we must hearken to both the Founding Fathers who created the Bill and their sons and daughters who reconstructed it.
Amar's landmark work invites citizens to a deeper understanding of their Bill of Rights and will set the basic terms of debate about it for modern lawyers, jurists, and historians for years to come.

More books from Yale University Press

Cover of the book Georges Seurat by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Cover of the book Restless Valley by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Cover of the book Conscience and Conversion by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Cover of the book Æthelstan by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Cover of the book North Korea's Hidden Revolution by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Cover of the book Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability: Redefining Our Relationship with Nature by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Cover of the book The Opera Lover's Companion by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Cover of the book Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Cover of the book Forgotten Voices of Mao's Great Famine, 1958-1962 by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Cover of the book The Romans and their World by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Cover of the book The Last Days of the Sioux Nation by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Cover of the book The Anglo-Saxon World by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Cover of the book The Climate Casino by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Cover of the book Stepping-Stones by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
Cover of the book Testcraft by Professor Akhil Reed Amar
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy