Keeping the Republic : a defense of American constitutionalism / Dennis Hale and Marc Landy.

Lawrence, Kansas : University Press of Kansas, [2024]

275 pages ; 24 cm.

American political thought.

"Keeping the Republic is a defense of the American constitutional order, and a response to its critics, including those who are estranged from the very idea of a fixed constitution in which "the living are governed by the dead." Dennis Hale and Marc Landy takes seriously the criticisms of the United States Constitution. Before mounting their argument, they present an intellectual history of the key critics, including Thomas Paine, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Woodrow Wilson, Robert Dahl, and Sanford Levinson. Hale and Landy frame their defense of the Constitution by understanding America in terms of modernity, in which small republics are no longer possible and there is a need to protect the citizens of a massive modern state while still preserving liberty. The Constitution makes large, popular government possible by placing effective limits on the exercise of power. The Constitution forces the people to be governed by the dead, both to pay the debt we owe to those who came before us and to preserve society for generations yet unborn. Keeping the Republic is both a survey of American anti-constitutionalism and a powerful argument for maintaining the constitutional order of the nation's Framers"-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online version: Hale, Dennis. Keeping the republic Lawrence : University Press of Kansas, 2024

KF4550 .H3435 2024

English

9780700636235 hardcover
0700636234 hardcover
9780700636242 electronic book