Research Guide
Framing of the United States Constitution: A Beginner’s Guide
A research guide from the Library of Congress containing sources regarding the creation and ratification of the United States Constitution.
Creating the Constitution
The Revolution was not even over before the ramshackle nature of the Articles of Confederation began to show at the seams. A convention assembled in Philadelphia in 1787 to construct a constitution, which proposed a single executive president, a bicameral Congress, and a judiciary.
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Benjamin Franklin: Framing the Constitution
When he returned to America, he hoped to spend his remaining years enjoying life as a private citizen, but public duty called once again. Although America had won its independence, many challenges - from paying debts to establishing a government - remained. Delve into the debates and trials of a new nation.
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Perspectives
The Founders' Constitution
A triumph of primary-source research, The Founders' Constitution is a brilliant five-volume series that presents "extracts from all the leading works of political theory, history, law, and constitutional argument on which the Framers and their contemporaries drew and which they themselves produced." The documentary sources and inspirations of The Founders' Constitution reach to the early seventeenth century and extend through those Amendments to the Constitution that were adopted by 1835. In cooperation with the University of Chicago Press, Liberty Fund has prepared a new online edition of the entire work at: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/ Philip B. Kurland was the William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Service Professor in the College and Professor in the Law School, University of Chicago. Ralph Lerner is the Benjamin Franklin Professor Emeritus in the College, and Professor Emeritus in the Committee on Social Thought, at the University of Chicago.
Liberty's Blueprint
Aside from the Constitution itself, there is no more important document in American politics and law than The Federalist-the series of essays written by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to explain the proposed Constitution to the American people and persuade them to ratify it. Today, amid angry debate over what the Constitution means and what the framers’ “original intent” was, The Federalist is more important than ever, offering the best insight into how the framers thought about the most troubling issues of American government and how the various clauses of the Constitution were meant to be understood. Michael Meyerson’s Liberty’s Blueprint provides a fascinating window into the fleeting, and ultimately doomed, friendship between Hamilton and Madison, as well as a much-needed introduction to understanding how the lessons of The Federalist are relevant for resolving contemporary constitutional issues from medical marijuana to the war on terrorism. This book shows that, when properly read, The Federalist is not a “conservative” manifesto but a document that rightfully belongs to all Americans across the political spectrum.
Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution
What did the U.S. Constitution originally mean, and who has comprehended its meaning best? Jack Rakove, professor of history at Stanford University, now approaches the debates surrounding the framing and ratification of the Constitution from the vantage point of history, examining the personal influences the various framers, especially James Madison, exerted over the process.
Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution
While some have boasted it as a work from Heaven, others have given it a less righteous origin. I have many reasons to believe that it is the work of plain, honest men.” –Robert Morris, delegate from Pennsylvania to the Constitutional Convention From distinguished historian Richard Beeman comes a dramatic and engrossing account of the men who met in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 to design a radically new form of government. Plain, Honest Men takes readers behind the scenes and beyond the debate to show how the world’s most enduring constitution was forged through conflict, compromise, and, eventually, fragile consensus. The delegates met in an atmosphere of crisis, many Americans at that time fearing that a combination of financial distress and civil unrest would doom the young nation’s experiment in liberty. When the delegates began their deliberations in May 1787, they discovered that a small cohort of men, led by James Madison, had prepared an audacious plan–revolutionary in its view of the nature of American government.
Negotiating the Constitution
No concept sparks more controversy in constitutional debate than "original intent." Offering a legal historian's approach to the subject, this book demonstrates that the framers deliberately obscured one of their more important decisions. Joseph M. Lynch argues that the Constitution was a product of political struggles involving regional interests, economic concerns, and ideology. The framers, he maintains, settled on enigmatic wording of the Necessary and Proper Clause and of the General Welfare provision in the Spending Clause as a compromise, leaving the extent of federal power to be determined by the political process. During ratification, however, attempts by dissident framers to undo the compromise were repelled in The Federalist: charges of overly broad congressional powers were met with protestations that in fact these powers were limited. Lynch describes how early lawmakers applied the Constitution to such issues as executive power and privilege, the deportation of aliens, and the prohibition of seditious speech. He follows the disputes over the interpretation of this document?focusing on James Madison's changing views?as the new government took shape and political parties were formed. Lynch points out that the first six Congresses and President George Washington disregarded the framers' intentions when they were deemed impractical to follow. In contrast, he warns that the version of original intent put forth in recent Supreme Court opinions regarding congressional power could hinder Congress in serving the nation.
The Constitution Did Not Create a Democracy
Gain a nuanced understanding of what the Founders' "original intent" really was and how so many of the questions they grappled with divided them for their entire lives - ultimately being bequeathed to their successors and persisting even to this day.
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The Constitution: The Compromise That Made a Nation
Distinguished actors re-create the tense exchanges between the Colonial leaders who meet in secret sessions in Philadelphia in May of 1789. We are plunged into the passionate arguments -- finally resolved by the "Great Compromise" between the big states and small states -- that preceded the framing of the Constitution.
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