Constitutional Heritage Research Articles

Refounding Denied: Hannah Arendt on Limited Principles and the Lost Promise of Reconstruction

This article argues that Hannah Arendt’s essay “Civil Disobedience” contains a critique of white constitutionalism. A close reading of Arendt’s comments on the failure of Reconstruction to durably found Black citizenship reveals that the anti-Blackness of her account does not consist in ignoring the racialization of constitutional order but, to the contrary, in a dismissal of Black politics due to the limitations of a white constitutional heritage. In “Civil Disobedience,” Arendt thus stood on the edge of an insight that she failed to develop more fully: Black movements had brought to light the limitations that racial domination places on the “augmentation” of America’s founding principles. For Arendt, the notion of the “principle” is meant to mediate the novelty of action with the durability of order. But to the extent that she views American institutions as defined by the “inherited crime” of slavery, feedback across temporal strata—between a principle in past, present, and future—is structurally blocked. The symbolic whiteness of citizenship undermines institutional durability, as it generates a crisis of constitutional authority for all. Tracing the sources behind Arendt’s pessimistic vision, the article demonstrates echoes between her account and the literature on which she relied: Tocqueville; Stanley Elkins; and, possibly, W. E. B. Du Bois. It concludes with a reading of Arendt’s commentary on Reconstruction as the attempt to recover a lost moment of foundation, an unredeemed promise of refounding.

Was the Constitution of 3 May 1791 a Source of Inspiration for 19th Century Polish Constitutional Drafts? The Problem of Using Polish Constitutional Heritage in the Congress Kingdom of Poland in 1815 and 1831

The article focuses on the problem of using legal heritage based on the example of the Constitution of 3 May 1791. This issue is considered in relation to two selected moments in the history of the Congress Kingdom of Poland – 1814/1815 and 1831. What connects them and, at the same time, makes them unique periods in the political and constitutional history of Polish territories under the partitions is the relative freedom the Polish elites had in their right to decide on the constitutional foundations of their own statehood. In 1814/1815, Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski was granted the emperor’s consent to prepare a draft which, after corrections, became the basis of the Constitutional Act granted by Alexander I on November 27, 1815. Similarly, in 1831, after the dethronement of Tsar Nicholas I, the insurgent elites were free to embark on an unfettered constitutional debate on the systemic reform of the state. Both in 1814/1815 and in 1831, Polish political and intellectual elites faced a dilemma as to whether the Constitution of 3 May could serve mainly as a monument to and symbol of Polish history, or whether it still had the potential to be directly applied; and if so, then to what extent and under what conditions? The publication is devoted to exploring the answers to these questions.

Czy Konstytucja 3 maja stanowiła źródło inspiracji dla XIX-wiecznych polskich projektów konstytucyjnych? Problem wykorzystania dziedzictwa prawnego w pracach nad reformami ustrojowymi 1815 i 1831 r.

Was the Constitution of May Third of 1791 a Source of Inspiration for 19th Century Polish Constitutional Drafts? The Problem of Using Polish Constitutional Heritage in the Congress Kingdom of Poland in 1815 and 1831 The article focuses on the problem of using the legal heritage based on the example of the May Third Constitution. This issue is considered in relation to two selected moments in the history of the Congress Kingdom of Poland – 1814/1815 and 1831. What connects them, and at the same time makes them unique periods in the political and constitutional history of Polish territories under the partitions, is the relative freedom the Polish elites had in their right to decide on the constitutional foundations of their own statehood. In 1814/1815, Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski was granted the emperor’s consent to prepare a draft which, after corrections, became the basis of the Constitutional Act granted by Alexander I. Similarly in 1831, after the dethronement of Tsar Nicholas I, the insurgent elites were free to embark on an unfettered constitutional debate on the systemic reform of the state. Both in 1814/1815 and in 1831, Polish political and intellectual elites faced a dilemma as to whether the May Third Constitution could serve mainly as a monument and symbol of Polish history, or whether it still had the potential to be directly applied; and if so, then to what extent and under what conditions. The publication is devoted to exploring answers to these questions.

The Component of Respublica Romanorum in the Constitutional Heritage of Nobiliary Polish-Lithuanian Republic (16th through 18th Centuries)

When in the 16th century in many European states, the monarchal power began to drift toward absolutism, the Polish-Lithuanian state evolved in its constitutionalism along the Republican lines. Its monarch could be brought to accountability for the violation of the law. Likewise, he was freely elected by the nobles and held his position for life. The nation of nobles that, by the standards of the time, made up a remarkable section of the entire population of the country was protected against the monarch’s attempts against their liberties by a series of remarkable privileges. And indeed, a noble’s property was prevented from being unreasonably confiscated. Likewise, an individual of nobiliary status could not be arbitrarily imprisoned. The representatives of nobles, while sitting in the benches of the Seym, had a considerable share in exercising the state power, particularly in the area of the law-creating process and when the imposing of tax liabilities was debated. In addition, the clauses of the Henrician Articles (1573), which were a kind of Fundamental Law of the Nobiliary Republic, guaranteed the mass of the nobles’religious toleration within the Christian denominations. The spirit of this toleration in practice also applied to the non-Christians (Jews and Muslim Tartars who inhabited the Republic). The republican slogans that were responsible for forming a specific frame of mind of the nobles assumed a new dimension when the culture of Latinitas type began to be promoted. The latter started to develop on the occasion of the acceptance by the authorities of the Nobiliary Republic of the principles of the Council of Trent, which happened in the 1570s. The Republic remained within the Catholic Camp. From that time on, the young nobles used to be educated in numerous Jesuit colleges and had not only a fluent command of Latin but also a profound knowledge of the history and culture of antiquity. Hence, they looked at their state, the Respublica Polonorum as a successor of the late Respublica Romanorum with the virtues of the latter. These virtues, when filtered through the system of Christian values –pushed to the foreground the concern for the welfare of the motherland, support for the democratic ethos and egalitarian spirit within the nobiliary milieu, and also the willingness to defend the Christian world against the invasion of the barbarians (the concept of Antemurale). The republican spirit survived the era of constitutional deterioration in the country that started in the mid-17th century. With the era of reforms which began in the 1760s, the constitutional improvement reached its climax in the Constitution of 3rd May 1791. Like in the British system, king was located at the position of the monarch who could do no wrong since all his executive acts required the endorsement made by the right minister. The separation of powers was emphasized. The ministers could be brought both to their political responsibility to parliament if they lost the support of the majority in the houses and also to constitutional responsibility for their contra legem acts.

DUALIST POPULAR CONSTITUTIONALISM A Reply to Michelman

DUALIST POPULAR CONSTITUTIONALISM A Reply to Michelman

The “due process” of constitutional revision: which guidance from Europe?

This paper deals with the influence exerted by the Council of Europe, notably by the Venice Commission, and by the European Union on constitutional amendments with a special focus on Italy, a founding member state of both organisations. It proceeds as follows: it first provides a quick introduction into the vexata questio of the difficult balance between rigidity and flexibility of democratic Constitutions, well-illustrated by the academic debate and by the Venice Commission’s Report on constitutional amendments of 2010 (CDL-AD(2010)001). Second, the paper considers which European standards have been set, especially by the Venice Commission, to design an effective and legitimate constitutional amendment procedure, and whether the Italian constitutional provisions and practice have abide to them. Third, the contribution reflects on the influence exerted by the Italian participation in the Council of Europe and in the European Union on the substance of the amendments adopted to the Italian Constitution. It is argued that at least since the mid-Twentieth century constitutional amendments procedures can no longer be treated as purely national phenomena. They are more and more guided by standards set at supranational level, notably by the Venice Commission, as derived by the European common constitutional heritage. The influence is exerted both on a procedural level, defining what can be called as the “due process” of constitutional revision, and on a more substantive level.

The Venice Commission and the Construction of European Constitutional Law

Abstract Moving from the emergence of a third layer of European constitutional integration, as embodied by those various agencies and institutions called to promote human rights and the rule of law, the article focuses on the role of the Venice Commission as described by a recent book of Sergio Bartole. In particular, it dwells on the evolution of the Venice Commission, on the different functions it has been entrusted with, on the relationship with other institutional actors, on its fields of intervention and, lastly, on the methodological contribution its action may give on the establishment of a European constitutional heritage.

With friends like these, who needs enemies ? The Conservative Party and the British Constitution

This article challenges the idea that the British Conservative and Unionist Party is, or has ever truly been, ‘conservative’ when it comes to the British Constitution. It emphasises not only the degree to which the party’s self-appointed role as a bastion of constitutional heritage and moderate reform has often overlapped with self-interest, but also the remarkably radical ideas that the party has been prepared to embrace from time to time. Despite frequent electoral use of the constitutional issue as means to paint its political opponents as dangerous, the modern Conservative Party has now brought itself to a position where its approach to constitutional debate and niceties has become coloured by populism, albeit a populism still cloaked in a veneer of traditionalism.

The reference to constitutional traditions in populist constitutionalism – The case of Hungary

AbstractThe paper aims to highlight the nature and the relevance of the reference to constitutional traditions in the building of populist constitutionalism, with special regard to the Hungarian case. In Hungary the goals and effects of this reference – especially the references to the achievements of the historical constitution – must be discussed at the level of the constitutional text and with regard to the formation of the new constitutional jurisprudence and, furthermore, to the creation of the constitutional identity. Outstanding political theories have been built about the elements of national populism and all include a political emphasis on a nation's pride in its culture, history and traditions. This paper examines the normative legal consequences of this in a state where the populist political forces have consecutively gained a majority in the Parliament which enables them to adopt and amend a constitution and decide on the personal make up of the constitutional court. It examines the role of the reference to constitutional traditions in the transformation of the constitutional system. The illustrative case studies from Hungary show one element of the alternative to mainstream liberal constitutional democracy: a constitutional perception of the sovereign people with a strong common constitutional heritage, this latter to be respected by all state organs and by domestic, European and international law. The paper offers an understanding of this constitutional concept and assembles disclaimers and serious legal concerns that must be taken into account, at least in Hungary, but probably in many other national populist regimes as well.

ПРИНЦИП ПРИРОДНОГО СУДУ: АКТУАЛЬНІ ПРОБЛЕМИ ПРАВОРОЗУМІННЯ ТА ПРАВОЗАСТОСУВАННЯ В УКРАЇНІ

In 2016, a provision appeared in Article 125 of the Basic Law, which stipulated that higher specialized courts may operate in accordance with the law. Filling the content of this wording in, Article 31 of the Law "On the Judiciary and the Status of Judges" (2016) establishes that in the judicial system there are higher specialized courts as courts of first instance to consider certain categories of cases. This category of courts today includes the High Court of Intellectual Property and the High Anti-Corruption Court, activities of which are initiated by the relevant legislation. However, in political circles there was a discussion about the constitutionality of this court and, accordingly, the subject of the right to a constitutional petition questioned a number of provisions of the Law "On the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court" and appealed to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to declare this law unconstitutional. In turn, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine initiated constitutional proceedings on this issue. Familiarization with the legal position of the subject of the constitutional petition indicates that the key issue of this constitutional proceeding concerns the presence of signs of a "special court" (within the meaning of Part 6 of Article 125 of the Constitution of Ukraine) in the mechanism of legislative regulation of the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court. In order to find an objective answer to the existing conflict, it is necessary to abstractly identify the main features of a "special" court. To solve such an applied problem, the author of the article turned to the theory and applied provisions of the principle of natural judgment, which was the subject of this study. As a result of the study, the author argues that by giving the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court exclusive jurisdiction over the system of general courts, the legislator has significantly deviated from the permissible limits of constitutional legality. The author singled out and grouped the key features of a special court, which included: 1) Separation of a judicial institution with a separate system of instances for consideration of certain categories of cases selected from the general array (special jurisdiction) or in respect to a separate category of persons. 2) The court, which is entrusted with special, different from other general courts, the purpose and objectives of the activity. 3) A court formed to expedite the resolution of certain categories of cases specific to a certain period; 4) A court in which judges have a special legal status (special tasks in the administration of justice; special professional qualifications (requirements, selection criteria); a special (extraordinary) procedure for the formation of the judiciary, etc. It is seen that the principle of natural judgment – is a fundamental constitutional and legal heritage of civilized humanity, which is designed to protect people, their rights and freedoms from the arbitrariness of the state, and from the use of courts as an instrument of terror and wrongful persecution.

Introduction

Introduction Melvin I. Urofsky As usual, we have a potpourri of subjects for you to enjoy in this issue, and we also have contributions from what might be called two generations of constitutional and legal history scholars. David W. Levy is my exact contempo­ rary. We started out together as instructors at the Ohio State University in the 1960s and worked together for many years as the co­ editors of seven volumes of Louis D. Brandeis Letters. He is the official historian of the University of Oklahoma, from which he recently retired as David Ross Boyd Profes­ sor of History. Last year he asked me to read the manuscript of a new book he had written (tasks that we have done for each other for many years now), and while wearing my reader’s cap, my hat as editor of this journal is always near at hand. I suggested an article, and what caught my attention—and what I thought would interest our readers—is the reaction of the University in the McLaurin case. In civil rights litigation, we often hear about what the plaintiffs went through, and often it was indeed terrible, but sometimes the defendant’s actions are also impacted. Several years ago we ran an article by the attorney who argued the case for Kansas in Brown v. Board ofEducation. We think you will find this article just as interesting. Louis Fisher is another old friend. For many years, he was a fixture in the Law Division of the Library of Congress, where he answered legal questions from senators and representatives on a variety of matters. He has retired from that position and is now a scholar in residence at the Constitution Project as well as a visiting professor at the College of William and Mary law school. He is now also free to file amicus briefs in his own name with the High Court. For many years, Louis Fisher has been arguing— and correctly—that Charles Evans Hughes’s famous dictum “the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is” is wrong. Our constitutional heritage is developed by input not only from the judiciary, but from Congress, the executive branch, academia, and the people themselves. In this arti­ cle, he takes on the notion that the courts have been the great protector of individual rights and argues that Congress should be given far more credit than it has in the past. D. Grier Stephenson, Jr., the Charles A. Dana Professor of Government Emeritus at Franklin & Marshall College, has been writ­ ing “The Judicial Bookshelf” since before I took over as editor, and that is a long time. I always mention how grateful I am that he 6 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY keeps working along with me, but it is true. It would be hard to think of the journal without him. Turning to younger scholars, Timothy R. Johnson is the Morse Alumni Distinguished Professor at the University of Minnesota, Rachel Houston is a doctoral candidate there, and Amanda C. Bryan is a newly minted Ph.D. who is an assistant professor at Loy­ ola University in Chicago. They have been working a mine that will keep Court scholars busy for years to come, Justice Harry Blackmun ’s extra-judicial notes that he scribbled in green pencil through his 30+ years in the Marble Palace. During oral argument, Justice Blackmun took copious notes on the case in standard black pencil, but he also wrote about a lot of other things that were on his mind in green. In this article, we get a taste of what the Justice was thinking about. James A. Todd is an assistant professor ofpolitics at Palm Beach Atlantic University, and his subject is one of the great cases of the nineteenth century, Cooley v. Board of Wardens (1852). In that case the Taney Court essentially said that while the federal government under the Commerce Clause has power, if the national government has not acted, then the states are free to do so—even in interstate matters. While the Jacksonian Justices were more concerned with state than with federal powers, Professor Todd shows that the growing nationalism after the Civil War...

The Limits of Dissent: Reassessing the Legacy of the World War I Free Speech Cases

The Limits of Dissent: Reassessing the Legacy of the World War I Free Speech Cases LAURA WEINRIB In the history of the First Amendment, the free speech cases of World War I have long assumed a leading, ifunsavory, role. Ac­ cording to the conventional account, the na­ tion’s constitutive commitment to free speech emerged phoenix-like from the wreckage of the war. The Supreme Court’s decisions up­ holding convictions of wartime political dis­ senters reflected, on this view, an indefensible departure from American values. Yet judicial complicity was generative. It provoked an awakening to the importance of constitu­ tional rights and inspired courageous dissent­ ing opinions from Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Louis Brandeis. Thus, the cautionary tale of wartime capitulation cul­ minates in a shared celebration of American constitutional heritage. The great dissents marked a watershed in constitutional under­ standing, the dawn of a new age of judicial review.1 There is truth to this familiar narrative. Certainly, the enforced conformity of World War I was stifling and pervasive. The ar­ bitrary application of coercive state power inflicted great personal harms and depleted democratic discourse. As contemporaneous critics alleged, a war ostensibly intended to defeat autocracy abroad produced domestic repression on an unprecedented scale.2 Yet the pat progression from tyranny to liberation misrepresents the history of civil liberties in the United States in two funda­ mental ways. First, as a matter of historical causation, the World War I cases were less formative for the modern First Amendment than scholars have long assumed. Among the most notable features of the wartime repres­ sion was its persistence after the Armistice. Whereas parallel expansions of state power receded with the cessation of hostilities, censorship spilled over into peacetime. More than wartime conformity itself, it was the prospect of perpetual suppression that pro­ voked public concern. Moreover, even during the postwar Red Scare, free speech advocates REASSESSING WORLD WAR I FREE SPEECH CASES 279 were far more likely to endorse executive restraint or congressional oversight than ju­ dicial intervention. Second, and relatedly, the widespread aversion to what now seems an obvious alternative to state overreach—namely, the judicial enforcement ofthe First Amendment to invalidate democratically enacted laws—is more intelligible than it appears at first blush. Demands for judicial review of wartime legislation were dampened not only by war hysteria but by deeply rooted concerns about counter-majoritarian courts.3 This article endeavors to explain why opposition to the wartime cases was so muted despite mounting concern for preserving free speech. To make sense of this seeming dis­ junction, it seeks to unsettle the dominant depiction of the wartime decisions as an inexplicable lapse in judgment and instead to take seriously the debates about judicial role that roiled American society before and after World War I. To that end, the attempt here is to disaggregate the judicial enforcement of the First Amendment from a democratic commitment to freedom of speech. I In his foundational 1919 article, Free­ dom of Speech in War Time, Zechariah Chafee Jr. described an “unprecedented ex­ tension of the business of war over the whole nation.”4 According to Chafee, the government’s wartime propaganda campaign had transformed the United States into a “the­ ater of war.”5 Operations on the home front were multifaceted. The Committee on Public Information, under the leadership of George Creel, sought to mobilize public opinion by issuing inflammatory pamphlets, politi­ cal cartoons, and motion pictures, among other materials.6 Propaganda of this kind inflamed anti-immigrant sentiment and anti­ radicalism along with antipathy to the Kaiser. Patrioteering groups formed for the pur­ pose of sniffing out German sympathizers. Sometimes they reported their suspicions to the authorities. Often they took matters into their own hands, engaging in unlawful surveillance and vigilante violence, including brutal lynchings.7 Years later, George Creel acknowledged the pernicious effects of these “‘patriotic’ bodies,” whose “patriotism was a thing of screams, violence and extremes.”8 Others anticipated Creel’s retroactive assess­ ment. Norman Thomas, the Presbyterian minister who would go on to lead the So­ cialist Party, described a “war psychology” that “invaded the home, the street and the marketplace.”9 The esteemed legal scholar Ernst...

Brief of Amicus Curiae Adam J. MacLeod in Support of Petitioner, No. CV-18-0176-PR, Arizona Supreme Court

Every person has the ancient and fundamental right to equal treatment under the law. And every person has the ancient and fundamental right not to communicate a message they think is false. These rights are central to our legal and constitutional heritage. Far from competing with each other, they are mutually-reinforcing structural elements of American ordered liberty. The lesson of Masterpiece Cakeshop and Ashers Baking is that the common-law doctrine of public accommodations which the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed in Bell and Hurley remains the preferred means to avoid constitutional conflict between religion and expression liberties on one hand and rights of equal protection on the other. When a proprietor declines to provide a service, which would communicate a message that she wishes not to communicate, the reason for her declining—the reason because of which she declines in the language of public accommodation laws—is the message, not necessarily the person requesting the service. The qualified duty of proprietors not to discriminate in places of public accommodation is a duty not to discriminate intentionally, for an unlawful reason. It is a duty not to decline service because of a person’s status in a protected class. It is not a duty to prevent all undesirable consequence of one’s business decisions.

CORPORATISM AND THE BRITISH CONSTITUTIONAL HERITAGE: EVIDENCES FROM THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

Abstract This article challenges a historiographical understanding of corporatism as an appendix of fascist ideology by examining the elaboration and diffusion of corporatist cultures in Britain during the first half of the 20th century. The case study seeks, on the one hand, to highlight the changing nature of corporatism by showing the different forms - fascist and non-fascist - that it took in Britain in the given time period. On the other hand, the article connects British corporatism with the European corporatist movement, as well as with the British constitutional heritage, underlining the close entangling of national and transnational issues.

THE PROCEEDINGS BEFORE THE CONSTITUTIONAL TRIBUNAL ON THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SUBSTATUTORY ACTS IN THE YEARS 1986-1997

The Constitutional Court of Poland has been functioning for over thirty years now. The Constitutional Tribunal was established as a result of the act on 26th March 1982 on the amendments of the Constitution of the Polish People’s Republic. It was supposed to judge the accordance of the passed acts by the Sejm and other normative acts issued by the main or central state authorities with the Constitution. The legislator adopted that the Constitutional Tribunal judgements on the accordance with the Constitution shall be recognized by the Sejm. The regulations of the Constitution that was in force at the time did not regulate appropriateness, system or ways of proceedings of the Constitutional Tribunal. The act was supposed to regulate all those areas. It was passed no sooner that on 29th April 1985. The article presents the Constitutional Tribunal judgement heritage in the years 1986-1997 in relation to the substatutory acts. Those included first of all normative acts issued by the main and central institutions of public administration as well as those acts issued by other main and central public authorities. The procedures used by the Constitutional Tribunal concerning the accordance of the substatutory acts with the Constitution and statutory acts were discussed as well. The article also presents an issue of proceedings in case of legal enquiries . A matter of signaling decisions made by the Constitutional Tribunal about the possible misconduct s were alsodiscussed . The term a quo is indicated by the date of the first judgement of the Constitutional Tribunal. It occurred on 26th May 1986. However, the term ad quem means the date of passing a new act on the Constitutional Tribunal. It was adopted on 1st August 1997 on the basis of the regulations of the Constitution from 2nd April 1997.

Comparative Constitutional Law – an Indispensable Tool for the Creation of Transnational Law

The continuing importance of the study of comparative constitutional law – A European perspective – The Venice Commission and international monitoring of national constitutional systems – Authoritarian tendencies and the European Constitutional Heritage – Interpretation and application of constitutional provisions depends on the context – Comparative law as a common endeavour of judges, lawyers, and scholars

Editors’ Note

Editors’ Note Catherine E. Kelly and Joshua Piker This joint issue, “Writing To and From the Revolution,” is the product of a two-year collaboration with the William and Mary Quarterly aimed at reconsidering the ways in which the American Revolution served as a watershed separating the colonial and national periods and, by extension, much of the scholarship in the WMQ from that in the JER. We began with a series of questions: How and why does it matter that many of us still write to or from the Revolution? Are there better ways to conceptualize change and continuity? How has writing to or from the Revolution shaped the ways in which we have written about the Revolution itself ? Taken together, the essays collected in the two journals help us to see the American Revolution in new ways while pushing us to think about the implications of writing to or from the Revolution. The special issue’s introduction and conclusion, written by Alan S. Taylor and Serena Zabin, respectively, are published in the WMQ and the JER, but the journals contain different rosters of articles. This structure enables us to provide readers with more content and a wider range of perspectives. But we hope that it also encourages scholars rooted on one side of Revolution or the other to read across both journals. “Writing To and From the Revolution” would not have been possible without the generous support of multiple institutions and individuals. We are deeply grateful for the financial support provided by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture; the Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage and the Department of History at the University of Oklahoma; and the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. We are especially indebted to Douglas Bradburn, Founding Director of the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon, whose generosity made possible a two-day manuscript workshop, which he and his excellent staff hosted in the library. Workshop participants included—in addition to the authors published in the joint issue—Bradburn, Frank [End Page 597] Cogliano, Edward Gray, Patrick Griffin, Barbara Krauthamer, and Mark Peterson. We are grateful to them for the energy and expertise that they brought to the conversation. Articles in the William and Mary Quarterly issue of “Writing To and From the Revolution”: Revolution in the Quarterly? A Historiographical Analysis Michael A. McDonnell and David Waldstreicher Atlantic Cultures and the Age of Revolution Nathan Perl-Rosenthal Writing Women’s History Through the Revolution: Family Finances, Letter Writing, and Conceptions of Marriage Sara T. Damiano Independence and Interdependence: The American Revolution and the Problem of Postcolonial Nationhood, circa 1802 Eliga Gould A free digital version of this content is available via the OI Reader, which can be downloaded at no charge from Google Play and iTunes. [End Page 598] Catherine E. Kelly Journal of the Early Republic Joshua Piker William and Mary Quarterly Copyright © 2017 Society for Historians of the Early American Republic

The Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man, 1792-94: British and Irish Radical Conjunctions in Republican Paris

This article focuses on the English-speaking community in revolutionary Paris after the establishment of the National Convention in September 1792. More specifically, it highlights the close ties forged between British and Irish radicals within the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man at what was a critical juncture for foreign residents in the French capital. It suggests that British radicals in Paris adhered to a broadly Paineite tradition, eschewing the revered British constitutional heritage in their contributions to the debate on a republican constitution at the turn of 1793. Such views both set exiled Britons apart from compatriots at home who were active in the convention movement of 1792 and 1793 and drew them into a closer union with radical Irish reformers in Paris. This paper also refutes the widely-held contention that British residents of Paris formed part of the Girondin grouping. Instead it is argued that some British nationals had more than superficial sympathy with the aims of the Mountain, and this more radical strain of British activism may have provided impetus for British and Irish political conjunctions in the arena of revolution.

Between 250 years of free information and 20 years of EU and Internet

The right of access to documents is constitutionally based in Sweden and has a long history. The right of access is considered crucial to Swedish democracy. On entering the EU in 1995, Sweden declared that public access to official records forms part of Sweden’s constitutional, political and cultural heritage. The members of the EU for their part declared that they took it for granted that Sweden would fully comply with Community, now Union, law with respect to openness and transparency. Sweden continues to push for transparency when EU legislation potentially containing secrecy clauses is negotiated in the EU. It turns out, however, that the EU membership does pose challenges to the strong Swedish right of access to documents. The protection of personal data is controversial in Sweden to the extent that the stricter EU legislation clashes with the traditionally weak protection of privacy in Swedish law; the right of access to information has largely overridden the right to privacy. Large amounts of publicly available personal data, amassed in data bases by private actors, for commercial reasons but under the protection of the Swedish constitution, is causing problems especially since the Swedish constitutional law is considered, by Sweden, to precede EU legislation in the field. Sweden will somehow have to solve the dilemmas caused by the differing traditions of transparency between itself and other members of the EU and of other international organizations. Many answers – perhaps converging - will be provided in 2016 by Swedish official inquiries and the EU Regulation.Article first published online: 22 MARCH 2016

Constitutionalist Public Administration Paradigm

An essential question for American public administration scholarship is to what degree does (and should) our constitutional heritage influence our approach to administering the public sphere, and has this changed over time. Much scholarship addresses these questions from a normative theoretical perspective. This study investigates whether the normative claim made by the constitutionalist scholars, that the U.S. Constitution should guide public administrative practice, is actually born out of the practice. A longitudinal content analysis of Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76 from 1966 to 2003 provides evidence that the Constitutionalist Public Administration Paradigm is the predominant public administration paradigm in all the Circulars.