Righteous Anger at the Wicked States: The Meaning of the Founders' Constitution

Calvin H. Johnson

08.2005 г. · Cambridge University Press

Всичко за тази електронна книга

This book is a history that explains the adoption of the US Constitution in terms of what the proponents of the Constitution were trying to accomplish. The Constitution was a revolutionary document replacing the confederation mode with a complete three-part national government supreme over the states. The most pressing need was to allow the federal government to tax to pay off the Revolutionary War debts. In the next war, the United States would need to borrow again. The taxes needed to restore the public credit proved to be quite modest, however, and the Constitution went far beyond the immediate fiscal needs. This book argues that the proponents' anger at the states for their recurring breaches of duty to the united cause explains both critical steps and the driving impetus for the revolution. Other issues were less important.

За автора

Calvin H. Johnson is the Andrews and Kurth Centennial Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law. He received his undergraduate degree from Columbia College (Philosophy) and his law degree from Stanford. Before entering teaching, he was a tax lawyer with Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton and Garrison in New York and with the US Treasury Department.