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New Histories of American Law
The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution
Using the British Empire as a case study, this succinct study argues that the establishment of overseas settlements in America created a problem of constitutional organization that created deep and persistent tensions within the empire during the colonial era and that the failure to resolve it was the principal element in the decision of thirteen continental colonies to secede from the empire in 1776. Challenging those historians who have assumed that the British had the law on their side during the debates that led to the American Revolution, this volume argues that the empire had long exhibited a high degree of constitutional multiplicity, with each colony having its own discrete constitution and the empire as whole having an uncodified working customary constitution that determined the way authority was distributed within the empire. Contending that these constitutions cannot be conflated with the metropolitan British constitution, it argues that British refusal to accept the legitimacy of colonial understandings of the sanctity of the many colonial constitutions and the imperial constitution was the critical element leading to the American Revolution.
224 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2010
About the author
Jack P. Greene
61 books11 followersJack P. Greene is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at The Johns Hopkins University.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 3, 2016
This was a good book about the Colonies prior to the American Revolutionary War. It discusses the viewpoints and political views of the Colonists as well as the opinions of the British Crown and Parliament. It does a nice job of presenting both sides of the arguments in terms of the Colonists' side as well as the side of the British.
I thought it was well-written. It held my interest throughout the entire book. The author did a nice job of discussing both sides of the 'issue' facing the Colonists [how they felt they were being treated and ignored by the British government].
I thought it was well-written. It held my interest throughout the entire book. The author did a nice job of discussing both sides of the 'issue' facing the Colonists [how they felt they were being treated and ignored by the British government].
Read
September 29, 2015Gives a concise and insightful account of how British colonists were spurred to revolt due to their conflicting understandings of British law. This book reminds us that American identity was yet to be formed, explaining what it meant to be a British subject in America.
June 13, 2011
Time for a segment of "A moment in obscure history." This time, we're looking at the constitutional dispute that resulted in the American Revolution.
Since sometime in 2009, the Tea Party movement has lead a revival of interest in the US Constitution. Senator Mike Lee summed up why the increased interest of late during the release of his new book, "The Freedom Agenda: Why a Balanced Budget Amendment is Necessary to Restore Constitutional Government": many of our problems today stem from when the "federal government started ignoring those Constitutional boundaries about what Congress is supposed to be doing."
Suddenly, propelled by Glenn Beck, books like The 5000 Year Leap , a right-wing conservative's guide to the making of the federal constitution, "leaped" to the Amazon best seller list (it's now listed at 2,615 overall and the top 100 under "Politics"). While it provides only a simple, somewhat white-washed, and superficial vision of the US Constitution, no amount of increased attention in our federal constitution is too little.
"Where does the Constitution," goes the rallying cry, "give the President and Congress the authority for the laws they are passing?"
Neither the revival, however, nor questioning the constitutionality of the federal laws, is unique in history. In fact, it was a dispute over the constitutionality of a central government's actions that lead to another major event in our country's history: the American Revolution.
"The fruit of half a century of research and reflection, Greene's masterly book restores legal pluralism and constitutional controversy to their proper place among the causes, course, and consequences of the American Revolution." - David Armitage, Harvard University
In his short, and dense, review of the century and a half leading up to the American Revolution, "The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution," Jack P. Greene postulates and examines that evidence that the American revolution did not erupt purely as a simple dispute over "taxation without representation," but rather that such rallying cries emerged after decades of disagreement on who justly had the right to legislate for the American colonies
"Whether the king-in-Parliament, the ultimate source of statute law in Great Britain, could legislate for British colonies overseas was the ostensible question in dispute, but many other related and even deeper legal issues involving the nature of the constitution of the empire and the location of sovereignty within the empire emerged from and were thoroughly canvassed during the debate."
(From Constitutional Origins, p. 1)
It was only after the conflicting opinions of metropolitan Britain and that of the colonists failed to be reconciled that open warfare broke out in 1775, and it was why the decision to broach the topic of and ultimately pursue independence from Great Britain was so cautiously and tentatively pursued. The colonists considered themselves British subjects, citizens, not vassals and secession was not a choice they relished.
They saw themselves as part and partial of the British Empire. Indeed, as one Virginia lawyer at the time phrased it, they might be "subordinate to the Authority of Parliament," but only "in Degree" and "not absolutely so." (p.78). As free men and
"As free-born Britons, the colonists assumed, they could not be subjected to any but what Bland referred to as "a constitutional Subordination" to the parent state."
(From Constitutional Origins p. 78)
The nature of this "constitutional Subordination" was such that the colonists readily accepted the authority of Parliament in certain areas, but balked at the idea of taxation, seeing it as beyond Parliament's authority. "Indeed, considerable evidence suggests that the colonists' strong initial impulse was to exclude Parliament from all jurisdiction over the domestic affairs of the colonies." (p.79) Like our modern idea of the federal government, the states concern themselves with their domestic activities while the federal government's most basic responsibility is national security.
Interestingly, from a historical perspective, we start to see the first signs of federalism in the disputes between the colonies and the home country.
Further,
"[s]o long as Parliament confined its regulations to "restrictions on navigation, commerce, or other external regulations," they reasoned, the '"legislatures of the colonies" would be "left entire"and "the internal government, powers of taxing for its support, and exemption from being taxed without consent, and [all] other immunities which legally belong[ed] to the subjects of each colony agreeable to their own particular constitutions" would thereby, according to the "general principles of the British constitution," remain "secure and untouched.""
Sound familiar? If you hear the foreshadowing of the federalism that would be later inscribed into the US Constitution, there's a reason. It was rooted in the relationship between Great Britain and its far-flung colonies.
If, during the last couple years, you've found yourself at all more interested in the federal constitution and the limitations it places on the federal government, I urge you to look at the role constitutions, and constitutional disputes, played in leading to our own American constitution.
It's a great read, if a bit scholarly, and evidence that whether a law is constitutional is not a new question, but actually may be at the very root of the American experiment and its origins in the American revolution. The American revolution was not, nor is it today, an obscure moment in history, but rooted in obscure legal disputes between the colonies and mother country, long predating the Stamp Acts and the Boston Massacre. It began as a constitutional dispute between the central government in London and the British colonies in America.
Understanding why the colonist went to war, how they got there, and the legal battles that preceded the battlefields can be useful in understanding why the Founders drafted what they did--into the Declaration of Independence and into the federal constitution--and what those words mean to us now, even in the midst of our own constitutional disputes.
Pick up The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution by Jack P. Greene from Cambridge University Press, 2011.
(h/t Patrick Charles, who introduced the book to me)
Since sometime in 2009, the Tea Party movement has lead a revival of interest in the US Constitution. Senator Mike Lee summed up why the increased interest of late during the release of his new book, "The Freedom Agenda: Why a Balanced Budget Amendment is Necessary to Restore Constitutional Government": many of our problems today stem from when the "federal government started ignoring those Constitutional boundaries about what Congress is supposed to be doing."
Suddenly, propelled by Glenn Beck, books like The 5000 Year Leap , a right-wing conservative's guide to the making of the federal constitution, "leaped" to the Amazon best seller list (it's now listed at 2,615 overall and the top 100 under "Politics"). While it provides only a simple, somewhat white-washed, and superficial vision of the US Constitution, no amount of increased attention in our federal constitution is too little.
"Where does the Constitution," goes the rallying cry, "give the President and Congress the authority for the laws they are passing?"
Neither the revival, however, nor questioning the constitutionality of the federal laws, is unique in history. In fact, it was a dispute over the constitutionality of a central government's actions that lead to another major event in our country's history: the American Revolution.
"The fruit of half a century of research and reflection, Greene's masterly book restores legal pluralism and constitutional controversy to their proper place among the causes, course, and consequences of the American Revolution." - David Armitage, Harvard University
In his short, and dense, review of the century and a half leading up to the American Revolution, "The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution," Jack P. Greene postulates and examines that evidence that the American revolution did not erupt purely as a simple dispute over "taxation without representation," but rather that such rallying cries emerged after decades of disagreement on who justly had the right to legislate for the American colonies
"Whether the king-in-Parliament, the ultimate source of statute law in Great Britain, could legislate for British colonies overseas was the ostensible question in dispute, but many other related and even deeper legal issues involving the nature of the constitution of the empire and the location of sovereignty within the empire emerged from and were thoroughly canvassed during the debate."
(From Constitutional Origins, p. 1)
It was only after the conflicting opinions of metropolitan Britain and that of the colonists failed to be reconciled that open warfare broke out in 1775, and it was why the decision to broach the topic of and ultimately pursue independence from Great Britain was so cautiously and tentatively pursued. The colonists considered themselves British subjects, citizens, not vassals and secession was not a choice they relished.
They saw themselves as part and partial of the British Empire. Indeed, as one Virginia lawyer at the time phrased it, they might be "subordinate to the Authority of Parliament," but only "in Degree" and "not absolutely so." (p.78). As free men and
"As free-born Britons, the colonists assumed, they could not be subjected to any but what Bland referred to as "a constitutional Subordination" to the parent state."
(From Constitutional Origins p. 78)
The nature of this "constitutional Subordination" was such that the colonists readily accepted the authority of Parliament in certain areas, but balked at the idea of taxation, seeing it as beyond Parliament's authority. "Indeed, considerable evidence suggests that the colonists' strong initial impulse was to exclude Parliament from all jurisdiction over the domestic affairs of the colonies." (p.79) Like our modern idea of the federal government, the states concern themselves with their domestic activities while the federal government's most basic responsibility is national security.
Interestingly, from a historical perspective, we start to see the first signs of federalism in the disputes between the colonies and the home country.
Further,
"[s]o long as Parliament confined its regulations to "restrictions on navigation, commerce, or other external regulations," they reasoned, the '"legislatures of the colonies" would be "left entire"and "the internal government, powers of taxing for its support, and exemption from being taxed without consent, and [all] other immunities which legally belong[ed] to the subjects of each colony agreeable to their own particular constitutions" would thereby, according to the "general principles of the British constitution," remain "secure and untouched.""
Sound familiar? If you hear the foreshadowing of the federalism that would be later inscribed into the US Constitution, there's a reason. It was rooted in the relationship between Great Britain and its far-flung colonies.
If, during the last couple years, you've found yourself at all more interested in the federal constitution and the limitations it places on the federal government, I urge you to look at the role constitutions, and constitutional disputes, played in leading to our own American constitution.
It's a great read, if a bit scholarly, and evidence that whether a law is constitutional is not a new question, but actually may be at the very root of the American experiment and its origins in the American revolution. The American revolution was not, nor is it today, an obscure moment in history, but rooted in obscure legal disputes between the colonies and mother country, long predating the Stamp Acts and the Boston Massacre. It began as a constitutional dispute between the central government in London and the British colonies in America.
Understanding why the colonist went to war, how they got there, and the legal battles that preceded the battlefields can be useful in understanding why the Founders drafted what they did--into the Declaration of Independence and into the federal constitution--and what those words mean to us now, even in the midst of our own constitutional disputes.
Pick up The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution by Jack P. Greene from Cambridge University Press, 2011.
(h/t Patrick Charles, who introduced the book to me)
November 12, 2024
Lots of great information, though it's a bit of a slog.
February 3, 2012
The book is about what lead colonist to the war of independence in a nutshell. Its how there was constitutional uncertainties, confusion, misunderstandings , interpretation between both England and the Colonies.
Since their foundation they had always enjoyed some type of local autonomy within their communities. After the Glorious Revolution in England in 1689, when Parliament overcomes the king by disposing him and establishing another; they asserted themselves as the sovereign of not only England but of the British empire as a whole; the king acted only with consent with, to , and through parliament; it was now king-in-parliament.
with this change, the relationship with the colonies also altered dramatically. Even though it didnt happened right away but after the 7 year's war crisis is when parliamentary omnipotence was seen dramatically upon the colonies; coming down on their traditional local self-governance in order to restructure, and re-orde the british empire. This left the colonist uncertain of where they stood, their status was within the british empire.
Did colonist have englishmen rights? where was sovereignty ? was it in the king? parliament? did the colonies have any type of authority? did their laws have any legal weight in respects to what they could do or be recognize as englishmen? where they a settled colony or colonies planted in conquered territory? was sovereignty central such as parliament making all decisions? or was it fragmented like colonist felt, in which they had local autonomy to produce colonial laws, while parliament had authority to pass laws for the whole empire?
those questions and many more came increasingly into question during the 18th cent & more so during the imperial crisis that eventually lead to the declaration of independence after the colonist felt they had been betrayed by the crown when he did not intervene for the colonist cause upon parliamentary encroachments acts in the 1760s-1775.
Good book, dry reading at times, but interesting none the less about reading a little bit more than what traditional textbooks talks about the legal, political disputes that brought forth the declaration of independence, the war, articles of confederation, and constitution.
Good book , just wish it wasnt testing material for class lol d:-P
Since their foundation they had always enjoyed some type of local autonomy within their communities. After the Glorious Revolution in England in 1689, when Parliament overcomes the king by disposing him and establishing another; they asserted themselves as the sovereign of not only England but of the British empire as a whole; the king acted only with consent with, to , and through parliament; it was now king-in-parliament.
with this change, the relationship with the colonies also altered dramatically. Even though it didnt happened right away but after the 7 year's war crisis is when parliamentary omnipotence was seen dramatically upon the colonies; coming down on their traditional local self-governance in order to restructure, and re-orde the british empire. This left the colonist uncertain of where they stood, their status was within the british empire.
Did colonist have englishmen rights? where was sovereignty ? was it in the king? parliament? did the colonies have any type of authority? did their laws have any legal weight in respects to what they could do or be recognize as englishmen? where they a settled colony or colonies planted in conquered territory? was sovereignty central such as parliament making all decisions? or was it fragmented like colonist felt, in which they had local autonomy to produce colonial laws, while parliament had authority to pass laws for the whole empire?
those questions and many more came increasingly into question during the 18th cent & more so during the imperial crisis that eventually lead to the declaration of independence after the colonist felt they had been betrayed by the crown when he did not intervene for the colonist cause upon parliamentary encroachments acts in the 1760s-1775.
Good book, dry reading at times, but interesting none the less about reading a little bit more than what traditional textbooks talks about the legal, political disputes that brought forth the declaration of independence, the war, articles of confederation, and constitution.
Good book , just wish it wasnt testing material for class lol d:-P
October 6, 2012
Greene argues that differing opinions of elites in Britain and the colonies about Britain's (especially Parliament's) authority over the colonies and constitutional law were unable to be resolved and ultimately caused the colonies to succeed from Britain. Colonists were satisfied with being under the king, but not under the legislature. Internal v. external affairs.
As in his book Pursuits of Happiness he comes off as arrogant (particularly in the preface). I wonder how much of this is actually in question by historians. This book came out in 2011 and I really doubt many disputed his main argument was one of the factors of the revolution. Perhaps they don't put quite the emphasis he does, and rightfully so.
As in his book Pursuits of Happiness he comes off as arrogant (particularly in the preface). I wonder how much of this is actually in question by historians. This book came out in 2011 and I really doubt many disputed his main argument was one of the factors of the revolution. Perhaps they don't put quite the emphasis he does, and rightfully so.
Read
July 10, 2013'Origins is an impressive contribution to the study of legal history. Clear and succinct, its brevity will scare away neither the casual reader nor the beginning student, while its meticulously researched references will attract the seasoned scholar. Most importantly, its subject will be relevant as long as Americans continue to dispute the “ancient problem of how, in an extended polity, to distribute authority between the center and the peripheries.”'
Read the full review, "Jefferson's Mistake," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
Read the full review, "Jefferson's Mistake," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews