Reference Guides to the United States Constitution – serie

This volume traces the history of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. It shows that the constitutional guarantee against double jeopardy has its roots in ancient Jewish and early Greek and Roman law. After recapping the history of the clause the Supreme Court's current interpretation of the clause is explained.This book describes the circumstances in which the premature termination of an individual's trial bars a subsequent trail for the same offense. It also examines when the Clause prohibits the government from imposing multiple punishments for the same offense. The final chapter includes a discussion of bibliographical sources.

One of the ways in which the American constitution is unique among the world's mature democracies is the vesting of the power of constitutional review in the ordinary courts rather than in a specialized constitutional body. Baude uses frank, understandable language to explain the relationship between the constition and our rule of law.Without technical jurisdictional jargon, Baude is able to survey historical cases to analyze Article III, section 2 of the United States Constitution. However, Baude's work is vastly different from analytical works based on philosophical and technicalities of judicial jurisdiction. This work explores the relationship between the two, without drawing on the covert ideological premises of legal liberalism.

Article 1, Section 10 contains the most significant limits on state power found in the main text of the U.S. Constitution. Chief Justice John Marshall, perhaps the most important Justice in U.S. history, used this provision a number of times in a number of significant decisions to limit state power. These decisions effectively enhanced the power of our new federalist form of government. This book delves into the modern issues pertaining to state limitations by tracing its history and looking at today's most important factors.This work makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of the U.S. Constitution by detailing the most significant limits on state power. The many provisions studied in the book provide insights into the various aspects of constitutional interpretation.

As part of a new series of Greenwood's comprehensive reference guides to the United States Constitution, Professor Durchslag's edition on the Eleventh Amendment's guarantee of state sovereign immunity is the most thorough and up-to-date treatment of that amendment. The Court's interpretation of the Eleventh Amendment over the past two centuries has been an attempt to balance the sovereign interests of the states against the primacy of federal law, and is currently its primary means of articulating its federalist doctrine. Beginning with an extensive history of the Eleventh Amendment and the ratification debates surrounding it, Durchslag proceeds to a chronological discussion of the development of the first generation of Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence from 1793 - 1890. The book then proceeds topically, tracing the developments of the various doctrinal components of the Amendment, and includes suggestions as to how they may evolve. The work concludes with an erudite bibliographic essay to guide the reader to relevant primary and secondary works, and is fully indexed. For constitutional students, scholars, and legal practitioners, as well as for political scientists and historians studying the constitution or federalism.

Traces the history of, and analyzes, the current status of the law on a number of prohibited acts forbidden to the federal government as prescribed in Article I, Section 9, of the United States Constitution. Most of these represent constraints on Congress with the exception of the statement that no money may be drawn from the U.S. Treasury except by appropriation, which increases the power of Congress. The provisions include prohibitions against suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus except in cases of emergency and against passing bills of attainder and ex post facto laws. These prohibitions secure important freedoms for the citizens of the United States.Among the other prohibitions discussed are a delay in stopping the slave trade, forbidding taxes on exports between states, forbidding giving preferences to ports of one state, and forbidding public officers from accepting things of value from foreign countries. Several of these provisions, such as those concerning bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and the writ of habeas corpus laws are the bedrock of our free society. The provision on the need for appropriations enhances the role of Congress and sets up potential conflicts between it and the other two branches of government, conflicts that might lead to highly significant cases that will help to clarify to doctrine of the separation of powers. A table of cases, bibliographic essay, and an index to enable further pursuit of key topics is included to aid students, legal, and constitutional scholars.

American judges and legal scholars have long misunderstood the intended meaning of the Ninth Amendment and its relationship to the Tenth. Because of misinterpretation, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments have not been used to fulfill their original purposes. The limited and unlimited powers of the federal government have been shaped greatly by that error. In this book the authors clarify the actual meaning of the Ninth Amendment and its connection to the Tenth Amendment in order to provide a clear understanding of the full potential of the two amendments. Historical and contemporary details are included to provide an appreciation of the intended purpose of the amendments.

This book combines a detailed examination of the history of the Supremacy Clause with a comprehensive consideration of all aspects of Supremacy Clause Doctrine. It explores how the Supremacy Clause makes federal law the supreme Law of the Land, so that federal law overrides conflicting state law. This work also looks at how the Supreme Court frequently requires not supremacy but equality when applying the Supremacy Clause by invalidating state laws that discriminate against the federal government.This volume gives a detailed history of the Supremacy Clause by tracing the origins of federal supremacy from colonial days. It gives particular attention to the evolution of the Supremacy Clause in the Constitutional Convention and discussions of the Clause during the ratification debates. Foundational decisions of the Supreme Court interpreting the Clause are discussed as well as the role of the Clause during critical confrontations between states and federal government. This work also considers in detail the doctrinal role of the Supremacy Clause today by discussing contemporary topics and recent controversies surrounding them.

This book analyzes the structure of our constitutional system of government, providing an overview of the constitutional history of American federalism as it has been developed in decisions of the United States Supreme Court.Federalism: A Reference Guide to the United States Constitution provides a thorough examination of this significant and distinctive part of the U.S. constitutional system, documenting its role in major domestic constitutional controversies in every period of American history.Although the book is organized historically rather than doctrinally, the marked evolutions of important areas of doctrine are addressed over time. These subject areas include the scope of Congress's power under the Commerce Clause, the scope of Congress's powers under the Fourteenth and other post-Civil War Amendments, the states' authority to regulate commercial and economic matters when Congress is silent, the principle of the supremacy of federal law and the law of preemption that follows from it, intergovernmental and sovereign immunities, the obligation of state courts to enforce federal law, and the scope of national power to regulate or impose obligations on the states.