Constitutional Ism
Constitutional Ism
One of the most salient features of constitutionalism is that it describes and prescribes
both the source and the limits of government power. William H. Hamilton has captured
this dual aspect by noting that constitutionalism "is the name given to the trust which men
repose in the power of words engrossed on parchment to keep a government in order."[11]
However,
United States
In point of fact, there is a rich tradition of state constitutionalism that offers broader
insight into constitutionalism in the United States.[17] While state constitutions and the
federal Constitution operate differently as a function of federalism—the coexistence and
interplay of governments at both a national and state level—they all rest on a shared
assumption that their legitimacy comes from the sovereign authority of the people or
Popular sovereignty. This underlying premise—embraced by the American
revolutionaries with the Declaration of Independence—unites the American constitutional
tradition.[18] Both the experience with state constitutions before—and after—the federal
Constitution as well as the emergence and operation of the federal Constitution reflect an
on-going struggle over the idea that all governments in America rested on the sovereignty
of the people for their legitimacy.[19]
Books
Stephen M. Griffin, "American Constitutionalism: From Theory to Politics" (Princeton University
Press, 1996) at p. 5.
Gordon, Scott (1999). Controlling the State: Constitutionalism from Ancient Athens to Today.
Harvard University Press. p. 4.
^ G. Alan Tarr, Understanding State Constitutions (Princeton Univ. Press, 1998) and John J.
Dinan, The American State Constitutional Tradition (Univ. Press of Kansas, 2006).
Christian G. Fritz, American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition
Before the Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2008) at p. 284 (Observing that from the
Revolutionary era to the period before the Civil War "Americans continued to wrestle with what
it meant that their national as well as state governments rested on the sovereignty of the people")