Constituting Empire
New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664-1830
Daniel J. Hulsebosch
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 05/2006
Pages: 496
Subject: Law, History
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9.78E+12
eBook ISBN: 9780807876879
DESCRIPTION
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.