From Parchment to Power: How James Madison Used the Bill of Rights to Save the Constitution - Hardcover

Goldwin, Robert A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0844740128 ISBN 13: 9780844740126

Publisher: UNKNO, 1998

Synopsis

The mention of 1789 evokes images of the storming of the Bastille and of the French Revolution -- the peaceful ratification of the American Constitution. Nothing on the American political scene the drama of the overthrow of the French monarchy and the clarion call of the Declaration the Rights of Man and the Citizen -- "ignorance, forgetfulness or contempt of the rights of man the only causes for public misfortunes and the corruption of governments".

Foolish oversimplification and exaggeration, the American constitution makers must have said to this French rhetoric -- still to this day in the preamble to the French Constitution. The American Founding Fathers considered and defended the nation against a multiplicity of causes of misgovernment. The result is a constitution that has endured for more than two hundred years; the French document lasted fewer than three years, before France descended into the Terror.

As Robert Goldwin demonstrates in lucid, accessible narrative, the task of making the Constitution of the United States was not complete until the Bill of Rights was added. Lingering problems lasting beyond the ratification struggle threatened to undermine popular acceptance of the Constitution. But James Madison -- originally an opponent of the notion of amendments -- had the vision and insight to recognize the necessity of a bill of rights, to unite the support of "the great mass of the people" for the Constitution. Index.

About this title

About the Author

Robert A. Goldwin is a resident scholar of constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He has served in the White House as special consultant to the president, and concurrently, as adviser to the secretary of defense. He has taught political science at the University of Chicago and at Kenyon College, and was dean of St. John's College in Annapolis. He is the editor of more than a score of books on American politics, senior editor of the AEI series of volumes on the Constitution, and author of numerous articles, many of which appear in Why Blacks, Women, and Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution (AEI Press, 1990).

Review

From Parchment to Power is one of those increasingly rare books about American constitutional matters: It strives only to teach, not to grind axes; there are no tedious and tendentious academic squabbles being aired here. Rather, this is constitutional history as it used to be written-clearly, compellingly, and convincingly...The value of Mr. Goldwin's book is the sobriety of its lessons about how the Bill of Rights originally was understood. For those in the first Congress who framed the first amendments, the Bill of Rights was nothing compared to what it has become. -- Gary L. McDowell, The Washington Times, May 11, 1997

In this elegant essay on the Bill of Rights, Robert Goldwin distills a lifetime of reflecting about the first principles of republican government into a engaging primer on the origins, ironies, and deeper meanings of the first ten Amendments. -- Jack N. Rakove, Coe Professor of History and American Studies, Stanford University

Much of the story Robert Goldwin tells so elegantly in From Parchment to Power covers familiar terrain. What distinguishes his effort from all others, however, is that he not only presents a fascinating narrative of an important event, but also engages with deeper philosophical issues such as the nature of power, liberty and rights. Central to Goldwin's method is an appreciation for historical contingency and the role that individual reflection and choice can play in advancing the cause of freedom or tyranny...The great strength of this book lies in its elucidation of how, why and to what end Madison worked to add a Bill of Rights to the new Constitution...Goldwin's approach to Madison is sympathetic and open to the possibility that he might still have something to teach us. -- C. Bradley Thompson, TLS, September 4, 1998

The book allows clarifying of the muddied issues of contemporary constitutional jurisprudence by showing what is at stake in the current debate over rights: both concerning the often recondite debate over originalism versus something else in jurisprudence and also concerning the fundamental question of what rights are and how to secure them. Mr. Goldwin does this in a finely crafted historical inquiry, without polemics but with constant and searching attention to the many questions raised by what appear to be the tergiversations of Madison's career...The rich lessons in constitutional statecraft conveyed by this book coincide in no small measure with the fact that, like the book's subject, its author is one of those rare men, a scholar of the first rank who is also a man of practical experience on the highest level. (Terence E. Marshall, The Review of Politics, Winter 1998) -- Terence E. Marshall, The Review of Politics

About this edition

• Publisher: UNKNO
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0844740128
• ISBN 13: 9780844740126
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 213