BiblioVault - Books about Constitutional history

Hallowed Stewards

Solon and the Sacred Treasurers of Ancient Athens

William S. Bubelis

University of Michigan Press, 2016

Students of ancient Athenian politics, governance, and religion have long stumbled over the rich evidence of inscriptions and literary texts that document the Athenians’ stewardship of the wealth of the gods. Likewise, Athens was well known for devoting public energy and funds to all matters of ritual, ranging from the building of temples to major religious sacrifices. Yet, lacking any adequate account of how the Athenians organized that commitment, much less how it arose and developed, ancient historians and philologists alike have labored with only a paltry understanding of what was a central concern to the Athenians themselves. That deficit of knowledge, in turn, has constrained and diminished our grasp of other essential questions surrounding Athenian society and its history, such as the nature of political life in archaic Athens, and the forces underlying Athens’ imperial finances.

Hallowed Stewards closely examines those magistracies that were central to Athenian religious efforts, and which are best described as “sacred treasurers.” Given the extensive but fragmentary evidence available to us, which consists mainly of inscriptions but includes such texts as the ps.-Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians, no catalog-like approach to these offices could properly encompass their details, much less their wider significance. By situating the sacred treasurers within a broader religious and historical framework, Hallowed Stewards not only provides an incisive portrait of the treasurers themselves but also elucidates how sacred property and public finance alike developed in ancient Athens.

[more]

Historical Gloss and Foreign Affairs

Constitutional Authority in Practice

Curtis A. Bradley

Harvard University Press, 2024

A new interpretation of the constitutional law of foreign affairs, as it has been developed throughout its history by presidents and by Congress.

In the more than 230 years since the Constitution took effect, the constitutional law governing the conduct of foreign affairs has evolved significantly. But that evolution did not come through formal amendments or Supreme Court rulings. Rather, the law has been defined by the practices of Congress and the executive branch, also known as “historical gloss.”

Curtis A. Bradley documents this process in action. He shows that expansions in presidential power over foreign affairs have often been justified by reference to historical gloss, but that Congress has not merely stepped aside. Belying conventional accounts of the “imperial presidency” in foreign affairs, Congress has also benefited from gloss, claiming powers for itself in the international arena not clearly addressed in the constitutional text and disrupting claims of exclusive presidential authority.

Historical Gloss and Foreign Affairs proposes a constitutional theory that can make sense of these legal changes. In contrast, originalist theories of constitutional interpretation often ignore influential post-Founding developments, while nonoriginalist theories tend to focus on judicial decisions rather than the actions and reasoning of Congress and the executive branch. Moreover, the constitutional theories that do focus on practice have typically emphasized changes at particular moments in time. What we see in the constitutional law of foreign affairs, however, is the long-term accumulation of nonjudicial precedents that is characteristic of historical gloss. With gloss confirmed as a prime mover in the development of foreign affairs law, we can begin to recognize its broader status as an important and longstanding form of constitutional reasoning.

[more]

Hybrid Constitutions

Challenging Legacies of Law, Privilege, and Culture in Colonial America

Vicki Hsueh

Duke University Press, 2010

In Hybrid Constitutions, Vicki Hsueh contests the idea that early-modern colonial constitutions were part of a uniform process of modernization, conquest, and assimilation. Through detailed analyses of the founding of several seventeenth-century English proprietary colonies in North America, she reveals how diverse constitutional thought and practice were at the time, and how colonial ambitions were advanced through cruelty toward indigenous peoples as well as accommodation of them. Proprietary colonies were governed by individuals (or small groups of individuals) granted colonial charters by the Crown. These proprietors had quasi-sovereign status over their colonies; they were able to draw on and transform English legal and political instruments as they developed constitutions. Hsueh demonstrates that the proprietors cobbled together constitutions based on the terms of their charters and the needs of their settlements. The “hybrid constitutions” they created were often altered based on interactions among the English settlers, other European settlers, and indigenous peoples.

Hsueh traces the historical development and theoretical implications of proprietary constitutionalism by examining the founding of the colonies of Maryland, Carolina, and Pennsylvania. She provides close readings of colonial proclamations, executive orders, and assembly statutes, as well as the charter granting Cecilius Calvert the colony of Maryland in 1632; the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, adopted in 1669; and the treaties brokered by William Penn and various Lenni Lenape and Susquehannock tribes during the 1680s and 1690s. These founding documents were shaped by ambition, contingency, and limited resources; they reflected an ambiguous and unwieldy colonialism rather than a purposeful, uniform march to modernity. Hsueh concludes by reflecting on hybridity as a rubric for analyzing the historical origins of colonialism and reconsidering contemporary indigenous claims in former settler colonies such as Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.

[more]