Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking

"If there is one theme that runs through this book, it is that the Supreme Court is not the only interpreter of the Constitution, even if it is surely the most obvious and important one for most lawyers. ... Throughout the book, we take seriously constitutional decisionmaking by nonjudicial institutions by including materials ranging from resolutions by the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures in the late eighteenth century, to constitutional interpretations by the President and Congress of the United States, to constitutional assertions by social movements, such as the Seneca Falls Declaration of 1848, to constitutional arguments by particular individuals such as senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, the noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and civil rights pioneer Pauli Murray. Indeed, far from being the only source of constitutional law, the Supreme Court is not even the only judicial source. In this edition we have included more constituional arguments by lower federal courts, by state supreme courts ... and even a few references to the constitutions of other counrties."--Page xxxiii.