The United States Constitution: 200 Years of Anti-Federalist, Abolitionist, Feminist, Muckraking, Progressive, and Especially Socialist Criticism

The United States Constitution: 200 Years of Anti-Federalist, Abolitionist, Feminist, Muckraking, Progressive, and Especially Socialist Criticism

The United States Constitution: 200 Years of Anti-Federalist, Abolitionist, Feminist, Muckraking, Progressive, and Especially Socialist Criticism

The United States Constitution: 200 Years of Anti-Federalist, Abolitionist, Feminist, Muckraking, Progressive, and Especially Socialist Criticism

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Overview

"How can anyone claim to really understand our Constitution without knowing what these critical traditions had to say?"
—Michael Wallace, Professor of History, John Jay College.
"A real contribution to the subject of democracy and liberalism."
—John Ehrenberg.
"Does a marvelous job of returning the Constitution to its proper sphere, the product of the rough and tumble of politics."
— Malcom M. Feely, author of Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State.
"The United States Constitution is a provocative book, much needed for overdue rethinking on the Constitution proper and its amendments. By making available "the underside of criticism and protest that has accompanied the Constitution from its inception" the book cuts through a mountainous mass of conventional bombast, one-sided versions and outright fabrications regarding the Constitution. In clarifying what makes the Constitution's clock tick, the book lives up to its subtitle.
—Ira Gollobin, National Emergency Civil Rights Committee
NEVER BEFORE ASSEMBLED IN A SINGLE VOLUME—the major writings on the Constitution from six critical traditions. Here is THE OTHER SIDE in most of the key disputes over the Constitution from 1789 to the present, the side that was barely heard during the recent Bicentennial celebrations. Yet, it was often the popular side, raising many troublesome questions about the nature of American democracy that still remain to be answered. Now that the applause has subsided, every fair- minded person will want to know what these critics of the Constitution have to say about who did, and is still doing, what to whom, and why.
Section 1 outlines the main events and problems that led up to and contributed to the calling of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Section 2 concentrates on what actually happened at the convention. Section 3 deals with the two-hundred-year history of interpretations and amendments that followed. Section 4 offers a number of ideas that should prove helpful in constructing the adequate theory of the Constitution that still eludes us.
Skillfully woven into one volume the forty contributors include voices as varied as those of Gore Vidal, I.F. Stone, Ralph Nader, E.P. Thompson, Howard Zinn, Sheldon S. Wolin, Joan Hoff, Karl Marx, Jackson Turner Main, Charles A. Beard, and W.E.B. Du Bois joined—perhaps surprisingly—by Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Thurgood Marshall.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814761700
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication date: 11/01/1990
Pages: 342
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Birnbaum is the editor, with Bertell Ollman, of The United States Constitution: 200 Years of Anti-Federalist, Abolitionist, Feminist, Muckraking, Progressive, and Especially Socialist Criticism (also available from NYU Press). His work has appeared in The Guardian, New Politics, Socialism & Democracy, New Political Science, and other publications. He lives in Illinois.

What People are Saying About This

John Ehrenberg

A real contribution to the subject of democracy and liberalism.
—(John Ehrenberg, author of Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea (NYU Press)

Malcolm M. Feeley

Does a marvelous job of returning the Constitution to its proper sphere, the product of the rough and tumble of politics.
—(Malcolm M. Feeley, author of Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State)

From the Publisher

How can anyone claim to really understand our Constitution without knowing what these critical traditions had to say?"—, -Michael Wallace,Professor of History, John Jay College.

"Does a marvelous job of returning the Constitution to its proper sphere, the product of the rough and tumble of politics."— , author of Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State.-Malcom M. Feely,author of Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State

"A real contribution to the subject of democracy and liberalism."—, author of Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea -John Ehrenberg,author of Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea

"The United States Constitution is a provocative book, much needed for overdue rethinking on the Constitution proper and its amendments. By making available "the underside of criticism and protest that has accompanied the Constitution from its inception" the book cuts through a mountainous mass of conventional bombast, one-sided versions and outright fabrications regarding the Constitution. In clarifying what makes the Constitution's clock tick, the book lives up to its subtitle.-Ira Gollobin,National Emergency Civil Rights Committee

Ira Gollobin

Ira Gollobin, National Emergency Civil Rights Committee
The United States Constitution is a provocative book, much needed for the overdue rethinking on the Constitution proper and its amendments. By making available "the underside of criticism and protest that has accompanied the Constitution from its inception" the book cuts through a mountainous mass of conventional bombast, one-sided versions and outright fabrications regarding the Constitution. In clarifying what makes the Constitution's clock tick, the book lives up to its subtitle.

Mike Wallace

Mike Wallace, winner of 1999 Pulitzer Prize for history
How can anyone really claim to understand our Constitution without knowing what these critical traditions had to say?

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