The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review [Paperback]

This book makes the radical claim that rather than interpreting the Constitution from on high, the Court should be reflecting popular will--or the wishes of the people themselves.In this groundbreaking interpretation of America's founding and of its entire system of judicial review, Larry Kramer reveals that the colonists fought for and created a very different system--and held a very different understanding of citizenship--than Americans believe to be the norm today. Popular sovereignty was not just some historical abstraction, and the notion of the people was more than a flip rhetorical device invoked on the campaign trail. Questions of constitutional meaning provoked vigorous public debate and the actions of government officials were greeted with celebratory feasts and bonfires, or riotous resistance. Americans treated the Constitution as part of the lived reality of their daily existence. Their self-sovereignty in law as much as politics was active not abstract.Introduction - Popular Constitutionalism1. In Substance, and in Principle, the Same as It Was Heretofore: The Customary Constitution2. A Rule Obligatory Upon Every Department: The Origins of Judicial Review3. The Power under the Constitution Will Always Be in the People: The Making of the Constitution4. Courts, as Well as Other Departments, Are Bound by That Instrument: Accepting Judicial Review5. What Every True Republican Ought to Depend On: Rejecting Judicial Supremacy6. Notwithstanding This Abstract View: The Changing Context of Constitutional Law7. To Preserve the Constitution, as a Perpetual Bond of Union: The Lessons of Experience8. A Layman's Document, Not a Lawyer's Contract: The Continuing Struggle for Popular Constitutionalism9. As An American: Popular Constitutionalism, Circa 2004Epilogue - Judicial Review Without Judicial SupremacyLarry Krameris Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean of Stanford Law School. He served as a law clerk to Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., ol“Ž