Constitutional History of the American Revolution, Volume III

The Authority to Legislate

John Phillip Reid

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780299130749, 9780299130701
• eBook ISBN: 9780299130732
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

This is the first comprehensive study of the constitutionality of the Parliamentary legislation cited by the American Continental Congress as a justification for its rebellion against Great Britain in 1776.  The content and purpose of that legislation is well known to historians, but here Reid places it in the context of eighteenth-century constitutional doctrine and discusses its legality in terms of the intellectual premises of eighteenth-century Anglo-American legal values.  
    The third installment in a planned four-volume work, The Authority to Legislate  follows The Authority to Tax and The Authority of Rights.  In this volume, Reid shows that the inflexibility of British constitutional principle left no room for settlement or change;  Parliament became entrapped by the imperatives of the constitution it was struggling to preserve.  He analyzes the legal theories put forward in support of Parliament's authority to legislate and the specific precedents cited as evidence of that authority. 
    Reid's examination of both the debate over the authority to legislate and the constitutional theory underlying the debate shows the extent to which the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence were actions taken in defense of the rule of law.  Considered as a whole, Reid's Constitutional History of the American Revolution contributes to an understanding of the central role of legal and constitutional standards, especially concern for rule by law, in the development of the American nation.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Culture of Constitutionalism
• Chapter 2: Passage of the Declaratory Act
• Chapter 3: Scope of the Declaratory Act
• Chapter 4: The Logic of Supremacy
• Chapter 5: Limits of Supremacy
• Chapter 6: Constraints of Trust
• Chaper 7: Constraints of Consent
• Chaper 8: Constraints of Contract
• Chapter 9: Constraints of Constitutionalism
• Chapter 10: Constraints of Liberty
• Chapter 11: Constraints of Law
• Chapter 12: Precedents of History
• Chapter 13: Precedents of Charter
• Chapter 14: Precedents of Analogy
• Chapter 15: Precedents of Regulation
• Chapter 16: Authority to Regulate
• Chapter 17: Precedents of Legislation
• Chapter 18: Legislation of Supremacy
• Chapter 19: Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Short Titles
• Notes
• Index