Benjamin Franklin: Founding Father and Founding Urologist.

In this chapter, my focus is on an aspect of original constitutional founding moments (events that bring about a new constitutional order): the question of who made the constitution as law. Or, in other words, who was the legally authoritative agent (or author) in the making of a constitution? This question, for better or worse, plays a significant role in legal arguments about the legal content of some codified constitutions. I take no position on how significant, if at all, founding moments should be in constitutional law. I only offer a jurisprudential account of who, among the potentially many participants of a founding moment, counts as the legal authority who made the constitution (the constitution-maker). Lawyers across the globe routinely talk about what the 'founding fathers' or the 'framers' of their constitution (or a founding treaty) meant, expected, intended and so on. The point of this chapter is that some of the founding fathers talk is confused, because it refers to people who did not make the constitution. I dispel the confusion through analysis of what it means to be an agent behind making a constitution as law: what does it mean to be a constitution-maker?

The History of the Constitution of United States of America and Its Amendment Process

While many international lawyers are familiar with Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546), very few have even heard of Paulus Vladimiri (1370–1435) – a Polish priest and jurist who made striking similar arguments to Vitoria on legal universality and the rights of non-Christians a full century before Vitoria. This divergence of consciousness, I argue, provides a unique opportunity to explore questions of canon, reception, and the role of ‘founding fathers’ within international legal thought. Centring Vladimiri as an ‘Eastern European’ figure, I argue that his non-reception is largely the result of how Eastern Europe implicitly functions as a distinctly liminal space within international legal thought that makes any possible ‘founding father’ from this region immensely difficult to imagine. I examine this dynamic through the differing postwar efforts of the Polish jurists Kazimierz Grzybowski and C. H. Alexandrowicz to include Vladimiri within the international legal canon. In examining the background structures of twentieth-century international law, I conclude that, in a manner directly connected to the liminality of Eastern Europe, neither Soviet nor Third World nor Western imaginations could easily receive Vladimiri within their fundamentally political narratives of normative order that shaped their international legal approaches. However, despite this historic non-reception, I argue that Vladimiri, and the question of Eastern Europe more generally, holds great promise in our current global moment. Particularly, engaging Eastern Europe’s liminal character offers a more sociologically grounded alternative to the reductionist Schmittian view of international law as a product of inescapable conflict in a world of exclusionary ‘greater spaces’.

Este artigo busca compreender a profunda mudança de significado da palavra "antropologia" no Brasil, a partir da criação do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social do Museu Nacional; procura ainda estudar a relação entre a controvérsia científica entre David Maybury-Lewis e Claude Lévi-Strauss nos anos sessenta e a introduçao da antropologia estrutural no Brasil. As inovações conceituais e metodológicas são postas em relação com a institucionalização da pós-graduação, abrindo assim perspectivas de profissionalização em larga escala para as novas gerações de praticantes. Para explicitar a eficácia da aliança entre os "pais fundadores" do Programa, são analisadas suas trajetórias sociais e intelectuais baseadas em diferentes capitais sociais, carreiras e prestígio. A consulta dos arquivos PPGAS/MN permitiu objetivar as expectativas e estratégias dos "pais fundadores" ao se aproximarem da Fundaçao Ford para obterem financiamento para ensino de alto nível e trabalho de campo regular. O estudo das características sociais e intelectuais dos diferentes participantes de controvérsias científicas internacionais permite entender como as relações de poder internacional imprimem suas marcas na evolução dos sistemas de pensamento.

Federalism as an institutional doctrine

The Weberian ideal-type assists a nation in symbolising its agenda to itself and ensuring the continued maintenance of the national ideal. The heroic figure and ideal-type American, embodied by the ‘Founding Fathers’, was and is central to American Nationalism. Weber viewed this type of charismatic authority as unsustainable beyond the period of crisis (revolution), primarily because it is not conducive to regular economic activity. The United States however, passed from charismatic authority, relatively seamlessly, to a rational form of authority while retaining its charismatic leadership in the shape of their communal national heroic icons – the Founding Fathers. Weber's conception of Charisma is analysed here in relation to the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers and is further interrogated through Hannah Arendt's analysis of revolution and the instigation of what she referred to as a ‘pathos of novelty’ that predominates successful revolutions and the perpetuation of national ideals and values therein.

This essay examines three competing interpretations of the 'Founding Fathers' that were made in the contested political climate of the 1980s. The first is Marc Plattner's neoclassical economic interpretation that stresses Madisonian principles of law, property rights, and the danger of majoritarian rule to justify a minimal rule-based government and free market capitalism. The second is Robert Bellah's communitarian-democratic interpretation, which appeals to the Founders and our republican traditions to critique excessive individualism and advance a more democratic politics governed by the norms of civic virtue. The third approach considered is the anti-Federalist critique of the Founders by Sheldon Wolin, who sees in the Constitution the beginnings of a system of national capitalism and state power that undermined localized and democratic political culture. Each approach will be assessed for its contribution toward a more participatory notion of public life.

International Organizations as Corporate Actors: Agency and Emergence in Theories of International Relations

Haskalah and Beyond deals with the Hebrew Haskalah (Enlightenment) — the literary, cultural, and social movement in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe. It represents the emergence of modernism and perhaps the budding of some aspects of secularism in Jewish society, following the efforts of the Hebrew and Jewish enlighteners to introduce changes into Jewish culture and Jewish life, and to revitalize the Hebrew language and literature. The author classifies these activities as a 'cultural revolution.' In effect, the Haskalah was a counter-culture intended to modify or replace some of the contemporary rabbinic cultural framework, institutions, and practices and adopt them for its own envisioned 'Judaism of the Haskalah.' The pioneering work of the 'founding fathers' of the early Haskalah had greatly impacted the later developments of the Haskalah in the 19th century. Its reception in that century is studied as is the reception of one of the major figures of the early Haskalah, Isaac Euchel, and of one of the important German Enlightenment poets and philosophers, Johann Gottfried Herder, in the 19th-century Haskalah. The study of reception continues on the language of the sublime and the poetic imagery used in Haskalah, melitzah, as well as on the three major journals of Haskalah as instruments of change and of disseminating the Haskalah ideology. Finally, the aftermath of the Haskalah is addressed.

Book Review| January 01 1979 Elbridge Gerry: Founding Father and Republican Statesman Elbridge Gerry: Founding Father and Republican Statesman, George Athan Billias. Max M. Mintz Max M. Mintz Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Connecticut History Review (1979) 20: 51–54. https://doi.org/10.2307/44369992 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Max M. Mintz; Elbridge Gerry: Founding Father and Republican Statesman. Connecticut History Review 1 January 1979; 20 51–54. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/44369992 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressConnecticut History Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

During the years immediately preceding Israel's founding, Abba Hillel Silver was considered the most powerful leader of American Zionism. His leadership was viewed by numerous admirers as epitomising the yearning of the Jewish people after the Holocaust. However, almost immediately after Israel's foundation, he was relegated to the margins of Zionist politics; the more important reasons for this development being his status vis‐à‐vis the leader of the pre‐state Jewish community, David Ben‐Gurion, who was elevated to the revered status of the ‘founding father’ of the recently established state. This article discusses how Silver coped with this new situation, where only his great rival could legitimise him. After realising the futility of challenging Ben‐Gurion directly, Silver decided to elevate Ben‐Gurion in his speeches to the status of the ideal philosopher‐king. The question is whether by doing so Silver accepted the incontestability of Ben‐Gurion's charismatic leadership, or whether he was merely attempting to reinterpret Ben‐Gurion's new revered status in a way that legitimised his own Diaspora leadership, thus reinforcing a very different national ideology from the Israelocentric one represented by Ben‐Gurion.

Probably the most basic contemporary controversy over the interpretation of the Australian Constitution is that between the methodologies of originalism (or intentionalism) and progressivism. According to the first, the fundamental task of the Courts (and especially the High Court) usually is regarded as being to interpret the Constitution so as to give effect to the intentions of those who framed it at the great Conventions of the 1890s, commonly referred to as 'the Founding Fathers' or (as here) 'the Founders'. Progressivists, on the other hand, believe that a search for historical intention is at best incidental in the process of constitutional interpretation, and that the Court should construe the Constitution so as to bring it into accord with modern needs and exigencies. Between the two sides in this fiercely contested debate stretches a vast chasm both of theoretical approach and rhetoric. A third approach, literalism, despite a hallowed history in Australian constitutional law and its routine deployment in virtually all important cases concerning federal legislative power, today largely is overshadowed in the minds of constitutional lawyers by the fascinations of its two rivals.

Reviewed by: The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics by William J. Cooper Carl Paulus (bio) The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics. By William J. Cooper. (New York: Liveright, 2017. Pp. 526. Cloth, $35.00; paper, $18.00.) In this exceptional biography of John Quincy Adams, William J. Cooper examines the remarkable life of the sixth president while using Adams's expansive career to describe how American politics changed over his lifetime. Cooper writes that Adams's defeat by Andrew Jackson in the presidential election of 1828 "signaled the beginning of a popular politics buttressed by organized, vigorous political parties. . . . Never again could a presidential candidate claim to wear a mantle that had literally been possessed by the Founding Fathers" (258). Although the title of Cooper's book casts him as a "lost" Founding Father, it may be more useful to think of Adams as the last one—the final in a line of American leaders who did everything possible not to wear the badge of being a politician, but who also, one way or another, participated in the affairs of the nation at every turn. Cooper explains how the ideals of the American Revolution and being the most famous son of a Founding Father shaped Adams's aspirations to uphold the Founders' legacy. Despite holding true to his Revolutionary-era conviction that he must not be perceived as a mere office seeker, Adams keenly understood America's political and electoral system. Cooper writes, "His conviction about the right policy overrode all other considerations. He would stand where it placed him, even if he stood alone" (82). Most of the time, however, as the book makes clear, his convictions found him standing alone only for a brief period. After all, John Quincy Adams was the only American to serve in, or be nominated to, all branches of the federal government (while serving abroad, he declined a seat on the Supreme Court after being confirmed unanimously by the Senate). In short, Adams knew how to play the game of American politics. Cooper's book demonstrates how. [End Page 138] Adams "was an American convinced not only of American uniqueness but of his determination to maintain, even to advance, his country's stature in the world" (143). Cooper does a wonderful job displaying how this confidence affected Adams as secretary of state and president, when he negotiated a treaty to make the United States a continental nation and strove "to make sure that internal disagreements and squabbles did not endanger what he saw as the future glory of his country. . . . Following that path would be a moral act, for the United States was a moral as well as a political entity" (143–44). The Lost Founding Father illustrates well how those two convictions shifted over time, eventually becoming contradictory as the issue of slavery became central to American politics during the second half of Adams's life. This point serves as the most significant contribution Cooper makes to the historiography. Following a single chapter about the election of 1824 and John Quincy Adams's presidency, Cooper details the most politically active and important postpresidency in American history. The author outlines the Bostonian's evolution from a politician who tolerated slavery to preserve the Union (which symbolized the legacy of his father) to a chief public opponent of the slave power. Cooper writes that the debate over the Missouri Compromise had a "profound impact" on the then secretary of state and stayed with Adams while he lived in the White House and during his long career afterward (172). The Lost Founding Father tracks this transformation deftly and skillfully uses the personal change in Adams to reflect on the change over time in American politics that occurred during the final decades of his life. From the Bank War and debate over the tariff to the fight against the gag rule and the Amistad case, this biography details how John Quincy Adams found himself in the middle of almost every issue during his postpresidential, nine-term stint as a member of the House of Representatives. Cooper depicts this period of his life...

It has been a common teaching among modern historians of the guiding ideas in the foundation of our government that the Constitution of the United States embodied a reaction against the democratic principles espoused in the Declaration of Independence. This view has largely been accepted by political scientists and has therefore had important consequences for the way American political development has been studied. I shall present here a contrary view of the political theory of the Framers and examine some of its consequences.What is the relevance of the political thought of the Founding Fathers to an understanding of contemporary problems of liberty and justice? Four possible ways of looking at the Founding Fathers immediately suggest themselves. First, it may be that they possessed wisdom, a set of political principles still inherently adequate, and needing only to be supplemented by skill in their proper contemporary application. Second, it may be that, while the Founding Fathers' principles are still sound, they are applicable only to a part of our problems, but not to that part which is peculiarly modern; and thus new principles are needed to be joined together with the old ones. Third, it may be that the Founding Fathers have simply become; they dealt with bygone problems and their principles were relevant only to those old problems. Fourth, they may have been wrong or radically inadequate even for their own time.

Theodosius Dobzhansky was one of the principal 'founding fathers' of the modern 'synthetic theory of evolution' and the 'biological species' concept, first set forth in his classic book, Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937). Much of the discussion of Dobzhansky's work by historians has focused on English-accessible sources, and has emphasized the roles of the Morgan School, and figures such as Sewall Wright, and Leslie C. Dunn. This article uses Dobzhansky's Russian articles that are unknown to English-speaking readers, and his late 1920s to early 1930s correspondence with colleagues and friends in the Soviet Union, to clarify some of the Russian influences on Dobzhansky's evolving evolutionary views, particularly the development of his views on species and speciation. For Dobzhansky, as for Darwin, the problem of species and speciation was crucial for his theoretical explanation of evolution.