Cover: Declaring Rights, 1st Edition by Jack N. Rakove

Declaring Rights

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First  Edition©1998  Jack N. Rakove

ISBN:9781319242602

ISBN:9780312137342

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Gain new insight into the original meaning of the Bill of Rights. Look more closely at the intentions of the first Constitutional amendments and the significance of declaring rights as Declaring Rights walks you through the traditions and deliberations from which the document emerged.

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Table of Contents

  Foreword
  Preface
    
  Introduction: Rights across the Centuries
    
PART ONE: RIGHTS IN REVOLUTION
    
  1. The Seventeenth-Century Background
    English Precedents
    American Precedents
    
  2. Puzzels about Rights
    Defining a Right
    The Holders of Rights
    The Threat to Rights
    The Sources of Rights
    The Form and Function of a Declaration of Rights
    The Popularity of Rights-Talk
    
  3. The Colonists Appeal to Rights
    
  4. The Legacy of 1689
    Constraining the King
       1. Convention Parliment, Declaration of Rights, February 12, 1688 o.s.
    
  5. Rights in Resistance
    Challenging the Stamp Act
       2. Resolutions of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, October 29, 1765
    Disputing the American Claim
       3. Martin Howard,Jr., A Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax (1765)
    Consitutional Rights in the British Tradition
       4. John Adams, The Earl of Clarendon to William Pym, January 27, 1766
    Declarations of Rights as Instruments of Negotiation
       5. Contintental Congress, Declaration and Resolves, October 14, 1774
    
  6. Rights in the First Constitutions
    Constitutions: A New Definition
       6. Four Letters on Interesting Subjects, 1776
    Populist Suspicions
       7. Resolutions of Concord, Massachusetts, October 21, 1776
    Declaring Rights: The First Models
       8. Thomas Jefferson, Third Draft of a Constitution for Virginia, Part IV, June 1776
       9. Virginia Provincial Convention, Committee Draft of a Declaration of Rights, May 27, 1776
       10. Pennsylvania Convention, Declaration of Rights, 1776
    Massachusetts: A Final Example
       11. A Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1780
    A Legislative Milestone
       12. Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, 1786
    
PART TWO: THE CONSTITUTION AND RIGHTS
    
  7. Madison and the Problem of Rights
    
  8. Framing the Constitution
    
  9. The Basic Positions Stated
    A First Try at Amendments
       13. Richard Henry Lee, Amendments Proposed to Congress, September 27, 1787
    A Crucial Federalist Response
       14. James Wilson, Statehouse Speech, October 6, 1787
    
  10. The Anti-Federalist Case
    The Traditional Position Restated
       15. Brutus, Second Essay Opposing the Constitution, November 1, 1787
    Rights and the Education of Citizens
       16. Federal Farmer, Letter XVI, January 20, 1788
    
  11. The Federalist Position
    Can We Enumerate All Our Rights?
       17. James Iredell, Speech in the North Carolina Ratification Convention, July 28, 1788
    
  12. Madison and Jefferson: The Classic Exchange
    Defending the Veto
       18. James Madison, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, October 24, 1787
    The View From Paris
       19. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, December 20, 1787
       20. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, July 31, 1788
    Madisons Response
       21. James Madison, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, October 17, 1788
    Jeffersons Common Sense
       22. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, March 15, 1789
    
  13. Framing the Bill of Rights
     Madisons Statemanship
       23. James Madison, Speech to the House of Representatives, June 8, 1789
    Unweaving the Amendments
       24. U.S. House of the Representatives, Constitutional Amendments Proposed to the Senate, August 24, 1789
    Editorial Changes
       25. U. S. Congress, Constitutional Amendments Proposed to the States, September 28, 1789
    Residual Ambiguities
    
  Epilogue: After Two Centuries
    
APPENDICES
    
    A Constitutional Chronology (1603-1791)
    Questions for Consideration
    Selected Bibliography
    
  Index

Jack N. Rakove

Jack Rakove is the W. R. Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of political science at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1980. He is the author of The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress (1979); James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic (revised edition, 2001); Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (1996), which won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in history; Declaring Rights: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford/St. Martins, 1997); The Annotated U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence (Harvard, 2009); and Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). He has also contributed essays and articles to numerous scholarly collections, law reviews, and newspapers. In 1998 he testified at the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee hearings on the background and history of impeachment and has served as a consultant and expert witness in the recent litigation over the use of sampling procedures in the decennial federal census.