Amy Renee Haines | history…in a few words
Description: On the Civil War, Federalism, and the Nature of American Sovereignty.
Reviewed: The Words that Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840 , by Akhil Reed Amar, 832 pp. Basic Books.
I have long been a big fan of Akhil Reed Amar, who holds the position of Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University. His work on the Constitution – especially his brilliant The American Constitution: a Biography – is quite revelatory, especially for amateur Constitutional historians like me. So I am sorely grieved to say here that his newest book (of which Amar plans to make a trilogy), The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, is crippled – perhaps fa
The True Blue Federalist blog has been dedicated to exposing neo-Confederate myths and Lost Cause nonsense, so it may seem odd that it now is delving into issues around American Indian Law. But the American Civil War of the 1860s was all about self-government – about the nature of American federalism, who has the right to rule, and what popular sovereignty means. We are so used of thinking of this issue as a dichotomy – as a binary situation – that we forget there is a third sovereign within the American Co
Amy Renee Haines | history…in a few words