L. Levy – Encyclopedia of the American Constitution (Second edition)

Автор: L. Levy
Название книги: Encyclopedia of the American Constitution (Second edition)
Формат: PDF
Жанр: История Америки, Австралии, Океании
Страницы: 3309
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

This 6-vol. set of the 1987 Dartmouth Medal winner includes all of the material from the original 4-vol. set and 1992 Supplement, as well as updated original articles and completely new articles covering recent concepts and court cases since 1992. New material is alphabetically integrated throughout the set. Appendices include a case index and primary documents. Among the new articles in this edition are adoption, race, and the Constitution; birthright citizenship; Clinton v. Jones; disability discrimination; hate crimes; modern militias; Violence Against Women Act; and more.
The articles in the set provide comprehensive coverage of all aspects of constitutional law, as well as biographies of people who have had an impact on our government's legal framework (Supreme Court Justices, Presidents, Cabinet Members, Lawyers, and more). Judicial decisions handed down by the Supreme Court are also analyzed. Congressional laws, executive orders and other public acts that impacted our legal structure are also examined. Finally articles also cover historical periods (of the Court as well as of US Historical eras). Contributors all focused solely on the constitutional aspects of the many topics covered in this six-volume set and they are professionals who also had their own impact — lawyers, historians, and political scientists.

In the summer of 1787 delegates from the various states met in Philadelphia;
because they succeeded in their task, we now call their assembly the
Constitutional Convention. By September 17 the delegates had completed
the framing of the Constitution of the United States. The year 1987 marks
the bicentennial of the Constitutional Convention. This Encyclopedia is intended
as a scholarly and patriotic enterprise to commemorate the bicentennial.
No encyclopedia on the Constitution has heretofore existed. This
work seeks to fill the need for a single comprehensive reference work treating
the subject in a multidisciplinary way.
The Constitution is a legal document, but it is also an institution: a charter
for government, a framework for building a nation, an aspect of the American
civic culture. Even in its most limited sense as a body of law, the Constitution
includes, in today’s understanding, nearly two centuries’ worth of court decisions
interpreting the charter. Charles Evans Hughes, then governor of
New York, made this point pungently in a 1907 speech: ‘‘We are under a
Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.’’ Hughes’s
remark was, if anything, understated. If the Constitution sometimes seems
to be chiefly the product of judicial decisions, it is also what Presidents say
it is—and legislators, and police officers, and ordinary citizens, too. In the
final analysis today’s Constitution is the product of the whole political system
and the whole history of the many peoples who have become a nation. ‘‘Constitutional
law is history,’’ wrote Professor Felix Frankfurter in 1937, ‘‘But
equally true is it that American history is constitutional law.’’
Thus an Encyclopedia of the American Constitution would be incomplete
if it did not seek to bridge the disciplines of history, law, and political science.
Both in identifying subjects and in selecting authors we have sought to build
those bridges. The subjects fall into five general categories: doctrinal concepts
of constitutional law (about fifty-five percent of the total words); people
(about fifteen percent); judicial decisions, mostly of the Supreme Court of
the United States (about fifteen percent); public acts, such as statutes, treaties,
and executive orders (about five percent); and historical periods (about
ten percent). (These percentages are exclusive of the appendices—printed
at the end of the final volume—and bibliographies.) The articles vary in
length, from brief definitions of terms to treatments of major subjects of
constitutional doctrine, which may be as long as 6,000 words, and articles on
periods of constitutional history, which may be even longer. A fundamental
concept like ‘‘due process of law’’ is the subject of three 6,000-word articles:
Procedural Due Process of Law (Civil), Procedural Due Process of Law
(Criminal), and Substantive Due Process of Law. In addition, there is a 1,500-
word article on the historical background of due process of law. The standard
length of an article on a major topic, such as the First Amendment, is 6,000
words; but each principal component of the amendment—Freedom of
Speech, Freedom of the Press, Religious Liberty, Separation of Church and
State—is also the subject of a 6,000-word article. There are also other,
shorter articles on other aspects of the amendment.
The reader will find an article on almost any topic reasonably conceivable.
At the beginning of the first volume there is a list of all entries, to spare the
reader from paging through the volumes to determine whether particular
entries exist. This list, like many another efficiency device, may be a mixed
blessing; we commend to our readers the joys of encyclopedia-browsing.
The Encyclopedia’s articles are arranged alphabetically and are liberally
cross-referenced by the use of small capital letters indicating the titles of
related articles. A reader may thus begin with an article focused on one
feature of his or her field of inquiry, and move easily to other articles on
other aspects of the subject. For example, one who wished to read about the
civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s might begin with the largescale
subject of Civil Rights itself; or with a particular doctrinal topic (Desegregation,
or Miscegenation), or an article focused on a narrower factual
setting (Public Accommodations, or Sit-Ins). Alternatively, the reader might
start with an important public act (Civil Rights Act of 1964), or with a biographical
entry on a particular person (Martin Luther King, Jr., or EarlWarren).
Other places to start would be articles on the events in particular eras
(Warren Court or Constitutional History, 1945–1961 and 1961–1977). The
reader can use any of these articles to find all the others, simply by following
the network of cross-references. A Subject Index and a Name Index, at the
end of the last volume, list all the pages on which the reader can find, for
example, references to the freedom of the press or to Abraham Lincoln. Full
citations to all the judicial decisions mentioned in the Encyclopedia are set
out in the Case Index, also at the end of the final volume.
The Encyclopedia’s approximately 2,100 articles have been written by 262
authors. Most of the authors fall into three groups: 41 historians, 164 lawyers
(including academics, practitioners, and judges), and 53 political scientists.
The others are identified with the fields of economics and journalism. Our
lawyer-authors, who represent about three-fifths of all our writers, have produced
about half the words in the Encyclopedia. Historian-authors, although
constituting only about sixteen percent of all authors, produced about onethird
of the words; political scientists, although responsible for only onesixth
of the words, wrote more than a quarter of the articles. Whether this
information is an occasion for surprise may depend on the reader’s occupation.
In addition to the interdisciplinary balance, the reader will find geographical
balance. Although a large number of contributors is drawn from the School of Law of the University of California, Los Angeles, the Claremont
Colleges, and other institutions in California, most come from the Northeast,
including twelve from Harvard University, thirteen from Yale University, and
nine from Columbia University. Every region of the United States is represented,
however, and there are many contributors from the South (Duke
University, University of Virginia, University of North Carolina, University
of Texas, etc.), from the Midwest (University of Chicago, University of Notre
Dame, University of Wisconsin, University of Michigan, etc.), and from the
Northwest (University of Oregon, Portland State University, University of
Washington, etc.). There are several contributors from foreign countries,
including Austria, Canada, and Great Britain.
Every type of academic environment is represented among the eighty-six
colleges and universities at which the authors work. The contributors include
scholars based at large public universities smaller state colleges, Ivy League
universities, private liberal arts colleges, and religiously affiliated institutions.
Not all of the authors are drawn from academia; one is a member of Congress
and nine are federal judges. In addition, other government offices, research
institutions, libraries, newspaper staffs, and law firms are represented.
Each article is signed by its author; we have encouraged the authors to
write commentaries, in essay form, not merely describing and analyzing their
subjects but expressing their own views. On the subject of the Constitution,
specialists and citizens alike will hold divergent viewpoints. In inviting authors
to contribute to the Encyclopedia, we have sought to include a range
of views. The reader should be alert to the possibility that a cross-referenced
article may discuss similar issues from a different perspective—especially if
those issues have been the subject of recent controversy.We hope this awareness
will encourage readers to read more widely and to expand the range of
their interests concerning the Constitution.
Planning of the Encyclopedia began in 1978, and production began in
1979; nearly all articles were written by 1985. Articles on decisions of the
Supreme Court include cases decided during the Court’s October 1984 term,
which ended in July 1985. Given the ways in which American constitutional
law develops, some of the subjects treated here are moving targets. In a
project like this one, some risk of obsolescence is necessarily present; at this
writing we can predict with confidence that some of our authors will wish
they had one last chance to modify their articles to take account of decisions
in the 1985 term. To minimize these concerns we have asked the authors of
articles on doctrinal subjects to concentrate on questions that are fundamental
and of enduring significance.
We have insisted that the authors keep to the constitutional aspects of
their various topics. There is much to be said about abortion or antitrust law,
or about foreign affairs or mental illness, that is not comprehended within
the fields of constitutional law and history. In effect, the title of every article
might be extended by the phrase ‘‘. . . and the Constitution.’’ This statement
is emphatically true of the biographical entries; every author was admonished
to avoid writing a conventional biography and, instead, to write an appreciation
of the subject’s significance in American constitutional law and history.
We have also asked authors to remember that the Encyclopedia will be
used by readers whose interests and training vary widely, from the specialist
in constitutional law or history to the high school student who is writing a
paper. Not every article will be within the grasp of that student, but the vast
majority of articles are accessible to the general reader who is neither historian
nor lawyer nor political scientist. Although a constitutional specialist on a particular subject will probably find the articles on that specialty too
general, the same specialist may profit from reading articles in other fields.
A commerce clause expert may not be an expert on the First Amendment;
and First Amendment scholars may know little about criminal justice. The
deluge of cases, problems, and information flowing from courts, other agencies
of government, law reviews, and scholarly monographs has forced constitutional
scholarship to become specialized, like all branches of the liberal
arts. Few, if any, can keep in command of it all and remain up to date. The
Encyclopedia organizes in readable form an epitome of all that is known
and understood on the subject of the Constitution by the nation’s specialist
scholars.
Because space is limited, no encyclopedia article can pretend to exhaust
its subject. Moreover, an encyclopedia is not the same kind of contribution
to knowledge as a monograph based on original research in the primary
sources is. An encyclopedia is a compendium of knowledge, a reference work
addressed to a wide variety of interested audiences: students in secondary
school, college, graduate school, and law school; scholars and teachers of
constitutional law and history; lawyers; legislators; jurists; government officials;
journalists; and educated citizens who care about their Constitution
and its history. Typically, an article in this Encyclopedia contains not only
cross-references to other articles but also a bibliography that will aid the
reader in pursuing his or her own study of the subject.
In addition to the articles, the Encyclopedia comprises several appendices.
There is a copy of the complete text of the Constitution as well as of George
Washington’s Letter of Transmittal. A glossary defines legal terms that may
be unfamiliar to readers who are not lawyers. Two chronologies will help put
topics in historical perspective; one is a detailed chronology of the framing
and ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the other is a
more general chronology of American constitutional history. Finally, there
are three indexes: the first is an index of court cases, with the complete
citation to every case mentioned in the Encyclopedia (to which is attached
a brief guide to the use of legal citations); the second is an index of names;
and the third is a general topical index.
For some readers an encyclopedia article will be a stopping-point, but the
articles in this Encyclopedia are intended to be doorways leading to ideas
and to additional reading, and perhaps to the reader’s development of independent
judgment about the Constitution. After all, when the American
Constitution’s tricentennial is celebrated in 2087, what the Constitution has
become will depend less on the views of specialists than on the beliefs and
behavior of the nation’s citizens.
LEONARD W. LEVY