Douglas A. Irwin and Richard Sylla (eds.), Founding Choices: American Economic Policy in the 1790s, National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, 368 pp., hardback 110,paperback110, paperback 110,paperback35) (original) (raw)
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Quote 1: "It was a truly remarkable assembly of men that gathered in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787, to undertake the work of reconstructing the American system of government. It is not merely patriotic pride that compels one to assert that never in the history of assemblies has there been a convention of men richer in political experience and in practical knowledge, or endowed with a profounder insight into the springs of human action and the intimate essence of government." --Charles Beard, The Supreme Court and the Constitution (1912) p. 91
The Political Economy of Constitutional Design: Did the Founding Fathers Get It Right in 1787?
It is no understatement to say that the U.S. Constitution's original design had a profound influence on the subsequent course of American economic and political development. It is equally no understatement to say that scholars have long regarded explaining the political economy behind the Constitution's design a paramount task. 1 A dominant theme in this scholarship is that the design of the Constitution reflects a series of agreements and compromises among its framers, who represented competing economic, ideological, and sectional interests. One of the most important economic aspects is said to be an "agreement" between northern commercial and southern slave interests concerning the above clauses in the Constitution. The meanings of the clauses should be evident. In the first two clauses, the national government was given the power to tax and regulate commerce (both interstate and international). At issue as far as the North-South "agreement" is concerned was whether a super 1 For examples of the major historical and political studies offering various explanations for the design of the Constitution, see Orin Grant Libby (1894), Charles A.
The outline of this paper is to demonstrate the notion that the Constitution should be considered as an economic document. This means that most of the rights were derived by economic interests and incentives. The distribution of power was supposed to enhance and protect the economic status of the newly established people in their States as a unified nation under one federally structured government. The stability that was advocated by Hamilton required delegating some power from the States to the Federal government. Madison sanctioned this transition by limiting the effect of damaging factions which he deemed inevitable. A pure democracy would be dysfunctional. Madison advocated a republic in which the damage inflicted by factions was to be managed and limited. The Constitution’s critics such as Beard fail to discredit the Convention. The notion of protecting private property by the Framers, as Nedelsky highlights, may have led to sanctioning inequality. Madison might have foreseen this, but tolerated it, as an inevitable negative consequence of taming the tyranny of the majority. Madison’s fight against factionalism in American politics results also in damaging the democratic essence of the republic. The Constitution had many unhappy supporters.
Enlightenment Economics and the Framing of the U.S. Constitution
Macroeconomics: Consumption, 2012
Some scholars have argued that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution did not have a common set of views on economics, or that the Constitution, except perhaps in isolated clauses, does not reflect any specific economic views. The principal Framers did, in fact, share a basic set of economic views, though of course they did not agree on all economic questions. Their shared economic views were common to enlightenment thinkers: promoting free trade, curtailing rent-seeking (the transfer of wealth from producers to non-producers through political power), and, in most instances, eliminating monopolies.These economic views permeate the Constitution and are not manifest only in odd clauses. The Framers designed many features of the Constitution to further these economic ends. I discuss four of them here: (1) the Commerce Clause; (2) the interstate and alien diversity clauses; (3) the elaborate procedures of bicameralism and presentment for enacting bills (and the provision allowing the Sena...
Up-Ending the Republic--Alexander Hamilton's True Legacy
The Beacon Spotlight, 2021
Issue 24 of The Beacon Spotlight—Up-Ending the Republic—Alexander Hamilton’s True Legacy examines how Alexander Hamilton, with the help of Chief Justice John Marshall, up-ended our Republic, subverting the limited government the Framers of the Constitution gave us, to get indirectly over time what Hamilton had sought at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, but wasn’t able to get directly.
American Journal of Legal History , 1988
The bicentennial of the Constitution has provided the occasion for an outpouring of scholarship concerning the origins of the Constitution and the founding of the American nation. Given the intellectual richness and political complexity which characterize the debates concerning the adoption of the Constitution, together with the extent to which those debates continue to inform our public discourse concerning the nature of American federalism and nationhood (notwithstanding the revolutionary changes wrought by the Civil War, the Civil War Amendments, and the influx of immigrants into American society), this new scholarship is welcome indeed. If nothing else, it may contribute some measure of information, and, perhaps, of balance, to the current, heated debate over the proper role of "original intent" in constitutional adjudication.