First American Constitutions - by Willi Paul Adams (Paperback)

About the Book

For the last twenty years this book has been cited by every serious writer on early American constitutional development. Any constitutional history of the independent United States must begin with this comprehensive study. This volume contains two new chapters: one demonstrati...

Book Synopsis

For the last twenty years this book has been cited by every serious writer on early American constitutional development. Any constitutional history of the independent United States must begin with this comprehensive study. This volume contains two new chapters: one demonstrating precedents in the state constitutions for the U.S. Constitution, and another chapter critically testing the 'republicanism over liberalism' thesis against political ideas and institutional arrangements that constitute the first state constitutions.

About the Author

Willi Paul Adams is professor of North American history at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies of the Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany. He and his wife Angela Adams translated The Federalist Papers into German (Paderborn, 1994).