'To Save the People from Themselves'

The Emergence of American Judicial Review and the Transformation of Constitutions

Robert J. Steinfeld

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781108839235
• eBook ISBN: 9781108996839
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In this expansive history, Robert J. Steinfeld offers a thorough re-interpretation of the origins of American judicial review and the central role it quickly came to play in the American constitutional system. Beginning with Privy Council review of American colonial legislation, the book goes on to provide detailed descriptions of the character of the first American constitutions, showing that they drew heavily on traditional Anglo/American constitutional assumptions, which treated legislatures as the primary interpreters of constitutions. Steinfeld then expertly analyses the central role lawyers and judges played in transforming these assumptions, creating the practice and doctrine of American judicial review in a half dozen state cases during the 1780s. The book concludes by showing that the ideas formulated during those years shaped critical decisions taken by the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which turned the novel practice into a permanent, if still deeply controversial, feature of the American constitutional system.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One Legislatures and Legislation under the First American Constitutions
• Part Two The Emergence of American Judicial Review: 1779–1787
• Part Three Judicial Review at the Federal Convention
• Index