American Constitutionalism Heard round the World, 1776-1989: A Global Perspective. By George Athan Billias. (New York: New York University Press, 2009. xvi, 544 pp. $60.00, ISBN 978-0-8147-9107-3.)

Abstract

George Athan Billias's new book makes a powerful case for the importance of American ideas in remaking the world over the past two centuries. Ideas matter, Billias believes, because they inspire. He recaptures how the very existence of a republican United States was a sign of hope for people across Europe and Latin America and, in the twentieth century, the globe. He challenges those who consider all forms of ideational export inherently imperialist, arguing instead that American and other liberal constitutionalisms have greatly enhanced human freedom. Billias limits his definition of American constitutionalism to six founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the first state constitutions, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, The Federalist Papers, and the Bill of Rights. Billias pays little heed to those who argue that these documents reflect internal tensions—that they were written as rebuttals to each other. Moreover, by limiting American constitutionalism to the founding era, the book tends toward “original meaning,” ignoring how those documents have been reinterpreted throughout American history as well as abroad. Thus readers miss how transatlantic conversations shaped the emergence of the American welfare state with its emphasis on social rights, and, in turn, how these new constitutional ideas influenced the ideas that Americans exported.