Readings on the Development of the AMERICAN CONSTITUTION

This compilation is an effort historically to trace the systrematic and ordered changes in Constitutional thinking, by judicious selection of the key operative phrases and concepts imbeded in hundreds of cases of varying importance, more clearly to illustrate the evolutionary process by which the Constitution has come to have its current form and meaning. The effort has been to extract from the hundreds of case decisions and dissents, those immutable words and phrases which capture the essence of the points at issue, in the Justice's own words just as they wrote them in the white heat of judicial argument. Moreover, the effort has been to trace the chain of precedents for cases and concepts, more clearly to show how the jigs and jogs fo decisions have altered the Constitution as applied. Whether or not agreed to (being the subject of strong controversy between the members of the Court itself), that process is one of organic, evolutionary growth, reflecting the chaging times, concepts, legal theory, and political ideas in the American experience. In a larger perspective, the Constitution has been the greatest American export to a world grappling with the desire to emulate the American experience of liberty under law. The volume will be of interest to students of the subject, as well as the legal profession; it is the product of a lifetime spent in the study and teaching of the Great Document.