Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664-1830According to the traditional understanding of American constitutional law, the Revolution produced a new conception of the constitution as a set of restrictions on the power of the state rather than a mere description of governmental roles. Daniel J. Hulsebosch complicates this viewpoint by arguing that American ideas of constitutions were based on British ones and that, in New York, those ideas evolved over the long eighteenth century as New York moved from the periphery of the British Atlantic empire to the center of a new continental empire. Hulsebosch explains how colonists and administrators reconfigured British legal sources to suit their needs in an expanding empire. In this story, familiar characters such as Alexander Hamilton and James Kent appear in a new light as among the nation's most important framers, and forgotten loyalists such as Superintendent of Indian Affairs Sir William Johnson and lawyer William Smith Jr. are rightly returned to places of prominence. In his paradigm-shifting analysis, Hulsebosch captures the essential paradox at the heart of American constitutional history: the Revolution, which brought political independence and substituted the people for the British crown as the source of legitimate authority, also led to the establishment of a newly powerful constitution and a new postcolonial genre of constitutional law that would have been the envy of the British imperial agents who had struggled to govern the colonies before the Revolution. |
Contents
15 | |
Imperia in Imperio Property and Sovereignty in a Frontier Province | 71 |
Imperial Civil War and Reconstitution | 145 |
Postcolonial Constitutionalism and Transatlantic Legal Culture | 203 |
Conclusion | 303 |
Notes | 307 |
Bibliography | 403 |
Acknowledgments | 467 |
Index | 469 |
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Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in ... Daniel Joseph Hulsebosch No preview available - 2005 |
Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in ... Daniel Joseph Hulsebosch No preview available - 2005 |
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Abraham Yates administration American Revolution Antifederalists appointment argued assembly authority Bailyn Blackstone Board of Trade Britain British Empire Cadwallader Colden century charter civil claimed Clinton Coke Coke’s Colonial New York colonists common law Confederation constitutional law constitutionalism Continental Congress convention corporate crown debate DeLancey DHRC elections elite Elliot enforce England English constitution English law English liberties federal Federalist Federalist Papers George George Clinton Goebel governor Hamilton Ibid imperial agents Indian institutions interpretation Iroquois James Kent John Jay Johnson Papers Journal judges jurisdiction jury Justice Kent’s king king’s land law of nations lawyers legal culture legislation legislature Livingston London Lord loyalists LPAH Madison Melancton Smith ment military Native Americans NYCD NYHS Coll NYPL officers Parliament parliamentary Petition political principles Privy Council Provincial Congress ratification Republic republican royal settlers sovereignty state’s statutes supreme court tion treaty Union William Smith Jr York City York’s Yorkers
Popular passages
Page 213 - ... whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.
Page 224 - Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs...
Page 75 - Do not entertain so weak an imagination, as that your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, your cockets and your clearances, are what form the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your letters of office, and your instructions, and your suspending clauses, are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole.
Page 188 - Regulating the trade and managing all affairs with the Indians, not members of any of the States ; provided that the legislative right of any State within its own limits be not infringed or violated...
Page 30 - And it appears in our books, that in many cases, the common law will control acts of parliament, and sometimes adjudge them to be utterly void ; for when an act of parliament is against common right and reason, or repugnant, or impossible to be performed, the common law will control it, and adjudge such act to be void ; and therefore in 8 E 330 ab Thomas Tregor's case on the statutes of W.
Page 39 - But if the Parliament will positively enact a thing to be done which is unreasonable, I know of no power in the ordinary forms of the constitution that is vested with authority to control it...
Page 203 - For, according to the system of policy the States shall adopt at this moment, they will stand or fall; and by their confirmation or lapse it is yet to be decided, whether the revolution must ultimately be considered as a blessing or a curse ; a blessing or a curse, not to the present age alone, for with our fate will the destiny of unborn millions be involved.
Page 224 - ... western sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together...
Page 241 - The Judiciary power of every Government looks beyond its own local or municipal laws, and in civil cases lays hold of all subjects of litigation between parties within its jurisdiction, though the causes of dispute are relative to the laws of the most distant part of the globe.