Judgment Seat Research Articles

The British Courts and Compulsory ADR—How Did That Happen?

On 29 November 2023, the Court of Appeal held in James Churchill v Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council, that the courts of England and Wales are entitled lawfully to order parties to engage in non-court-based dispute resolution processes. This important decision should not come as a surprise. This article will argue by reference to case law, judicial commentary and the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) that this decision is the most recent expression of an impulse the courts have long maintained: that a case can be dealt with justly by moving (by various means) litigants away from the judgment seat to one of negotiated, consensual outcomes. The decision corrects an anomaly within the CPR that obliges parties to further the overriding objective by considering alternative dispute resolution but deprives the court of a particular remedy to enforce that obligation. This article will trace the roots of the Court of Appeal decision and identify to what extent it is the natural progression in judicial thinking, and it truly breaks new ground. Keywords: ADR; justice; civil justice; court reforms; overriding objective; Halsey; CPR; Churchill v Merthyr Tydfil; Article 6; arbitration agreements.

Are Any Signs of Christ’s Coming in Matthew 24:1–31?

Dispensationalists continue to hold a wide variety of interpretations of Matthew 24–25. Views fall into two main groups: historical-futurist and strict futurist. Within the historical-futurist interpretation, there are the gap and chronological views. Both see the church, and sometimes the rapture and judgment seat of Christ, in Matthew 24 and 25. Within the strict futurist interpretation, there are the general to specific, chronological, and recapitulation interpretations. These views see only Israel in the discourse. Each interpretation is evaluated, and weaknesses are shown.

Oranges, and: The Giant

Oranges, and: The Giant C. Dale Young (bio) Oranges It is difficult, sometimes, to face facts:you know this. Our parents taught usto ignore problems, to look away,and I am no different. I, too, have needed love so badly I ignoredwhat was right before my eyes. In the market,this morning, the oranges were as brightas little suns radiating their own light. As a boy, how I admired the way a treecould blossom and then fill itself with fruit.I have written about this, chose to look carefully.But I couldn't turn such focus on myself or, better yet, on those I chose to love.When the clerk asked me if I loved oranges,I said No. And he smiled an uncomfortable smileas he packed my bags. I paid for my things and walked home. Twice, I have loved menwho loved alcohol more than they lovedme. Just a fact. I can say it now as fact.Some say fear fuels these things, fear of being alone, dying alone. But when are wenot alone? I stood in my kitchen by myselfand unpacked the groceries and thought againof the clerk's strange smile, the way he looked at me. There at the bottom of the grocery bag,a half-dozen oranges. I had forgotten I had themwhen he asked me the question. I had forgotten.The clouds above the Pacific are a soft orange now [End Page 76] as the last light of sunset reflects from beyondthe horizon. I will have oranges after dinner,the taste as sweet as innocence, what childhoodoffered up that was then abruptly taken away. [End Page 77] The Giant Like the heart, they were not removed fromthe recently deceased, the ancient Egyptianschoosing instead to mummify them. One neededa heart and two kidneys to travel to the other world. When Vesalius examined them, he saw themas two scales on either side of the heart as fulcrum,biased as he was by the Bible to view themas part of a system of conscience or judgment. Nature's redundancy, you can live with only one.But as with all things human, there is alwaysa risk of failure. Failure, after all, being human.When my father's legs began to swell, we all thought it was just age, swelling dueto a lack of movement. The adult human kidneyhas roughly a million nephrons, each workingto filter our blood and control fluid volumes. Tirelessly, these organs work 24 hours per day.We expect them to keep doing this because hopeis also an innate human trait. My father did notstop swelling. Both of his kidneys were failing, had done all they could do in a single life.The fluid began building up in his tissues.And soon, his lungs began to fill. To see himgasping, to see him struggling to breathe, this man who had lived a life filled with strongjudgments, it seemed impossible. The seat of judgment,the seat of conscience, the organs that made himjudge me so forcefully, so severely. The irony of it all. [End Page 78] The Romans called them renes, which in English became"reins," the things that reined us in, reined in others.My nature meant I was weak, a weak man who could notbe reined in. But that was many years ago, almost a lifetime. So many things said, and thenso many silences. And the last thing he said to me?"I know who you are now. Forgive me, I was wrong.You might be the strongest of all my children." But all things come to an end, even one's father. I kissedhis forehead. I held his hand. I said goodbye. I knew nothow to judge, how to think about judgment. I was a boy again,mesmerized by the giant, the giant who suddenly had fallen. [End Page 79] C. Dale Young c. dale young practices medicine full-time and teaches for the Warren Wilson mfa Program for Writers. He is the author of The Affliction (a novel) and five collections of poetry...

“The Robe of Righteousness”: Exilic and Post-Exilic Isaiah in The Book of Mormon

“The Robe of Righteousness”: Exilic and Post-Exilic Isaiah in <i>The Book of Mormon</i>

The UnAmerican

The UnAmerican

How to Think about the Climate Crisis: A Philosophical Guide to Saner Ways of Living, by Graham Parkes

<i>How to Think about the Climate Crisis: A Philosophical Guide to Saner Ways of Living</i>, by Graham Parkes

Не по Киплингу

Не по Киплингу

Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus by Andrew Hofer

Reviewed by: Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus by Andrew Hofer Kevin M. Clarke Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus by Andrew Hofer, O.P. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), xiii + 270 pp. Saint Gregory of Nazianzus challenges first-time readers with his abundance of self-referential tropes throughout his orations and [End Page 1403] poetry. "Upon whom are you fixated, Gregory, yourself or Christ?" The Nazianzen seems to be the most narcissistic of all the Church Fathers. Further, Gregory does not give us the satisfaction of a "dogmengeschichtliche Christology," and so it seems one may even question the extent to which he deserves to be called the Theologian. But Andrew Hofer, O.P., in his book Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus, shows that it is not narcissism at the heart of Gregory's preaching. Instead, it is precisely Gregory's love for Christ that propels him to discover all convergences with his own life and the life and mystery of Christ. Hofer writes that Gregory's "writings exude a highly sophisticated and profoundly personal insight into the mystery of Christ. He crafts his presentation to persuade others to be purified and, with Gregory himself as their model, to become like Christ in deification" (195). The text is well-structured around Hofer's thesis. Hofer observes that Gregory is "the most autobiographical of all the Greek Fathers," but not in the modern sense of the term "autobiography" (4). Gregory is eager to set himself up as an example of discipleship to his audience. Gregory writes about his life to show Christ hidden in it. Plus, it is not only Gregory's life that is interwoven into Christ's and Christ's into his. Gregory presents other saintly figures, such as his sister, Gorgonia, an exemplar of biblical living (45). Athanasius, too, rides triumphantly into Alexandria upon a colt like "my Jesus" (206). Confronting the injustice of Emperor Valens, Basil of Caesarea becomes "the fleshless one," a bloodless martyr standing like "my Jesus before the judgment seat of Pilate" (208). For Gregory, that is the point. The commingling of one's life with that of the Incarnate Word is not only a mark of discipleship but even the path to deification. Hofer organizes the book in the following manner. He builds a case in chapter 1 for a logo-centric theology, one that remains integral throughout the book. Gregory, often referred to as the second Demosthenes for his powerful rhetoric, is interested to claim rhetoric from the secular domain for his preaching, because his love for words is really a love for the Word. Contrary to the accusations of Emperor Julian that Christians were without reason (alogos), Gregory shows that Christ has assumed our rational nature (logikē physis). Hofer makes several key points: that "Gregory's words must not be separated from his faith in the Word"; that "the attention to words should be seen in relation to Gregory's training as a rhetor who seeks to persuade others to accept this philosophy of living by the Word"; and that "the Word in Scripture is channeled through Gregory's own earthly life and teaching for people to worship rightly" (53). Hofer argues that Gregory's autobiography is "Christomorphic," a notion he develops in chapter 2. Further, Gregory's Christology is "autobiographical," which [End Page 1404] Hofer develops in three parts in chapters 3–5. Chapter 3 explores a theological challenge in the "mixture" language that Gregory uses concerning his life and that of Christ. Gregory even uses mixture language to describe the Incarnation itself, though the Word does not become a single nature after the Incarnation (94–95). When Gregory ponders the rational soul of Christ, he exclaims: "O new mixture! O unexpected blending! He who is has come to be, the uncreated one is created, the limitless one is contained, through the mediation of a rational soul standing between divinity and the coarseness of flesh" (115; quoting Brian Daley's translation of Or. 38). Chapter 4 focuses on Epistle 101 and the ten anathemas from the perspective of Gregory's own salvation, and the impossibility of...

TO THE EMBALMERS

1 3 7 R T O T H E E M B A L M E R S G . C . W A L D R E P i.m. Mahmoud Darwish I went into the desert for the velvet flesh of two white fish. And when the heat of the desert was withdrawn from me I settled my chair by my heart’s black flame. A shepherd taught me the echo of the stars’ exquisite math which sounds in the night like a mesquite blossom. Small and golden I approached the bridge I had left inside the unfinished book where my faith lay dammed. Dip your finger in the rods and cones of the desert’s perfect eye, all who could not die were singing up to me. There is no ‘‘final rose,’’ I replied, only a succession of beds on which the clouds take their blue rest. In the arroyos a trickle of honey gathered in search of the bees that had chained it to a prayer. I gazed into it and saw my name spelled again in the worn boards of a pine floor, a stitched cloth over which the brass gears of my father’s war presided. My father went into the desert for a new flag to drape over the sleeping body of my mother, who had rubbed salt and cumin into the twin clefs of her neck and shoulders after she, impoverished, received the emperor’s summons. Now I ask the moon to testify to my body’s chill, the unaccompanied music that bandages the return of the dead. I have no patience and the almond cake is bitter on my tongue. What am I to call you when I see you freshly clothed in the catenaries of swallows? I who chose exile from the land’s sleep-script, its strange harvest borne upward by a wind from deep inside the earth. 1 3 8 Y If I go there now I will find another poet in my house from which my Christ has wandered, a shadow falling clean across the sea’s torn hem. I will follow Him into the smallest wilderness. There is no Babylon like the soul’s Babylon, its hanging garden wreathed in the voices of created things. Strike the pen from my hand if I have misunderstood how the dust returns to us, through the smallest dances. In the coasts of my adoption I grow colder, I cross my chest with a map of all the sun has denied. The temples lie behind me now as the bodies of women. Breathe on me, my childhood in the lost city of love. Let me be the only casualty, the waking wound towards which the forest of my fading heat is climbing. This is the basket I have plaited for you, from strips torn out of the oldest monographs, with the ocotillo’s passion. Beneath me, buried in rubble, a silver is waiting to be born into such commerce as belief may lend. You may name it for my body when you meet it by day at the judgment seat, by night on the narrow road that sheathes my brother-song, green with pine boughs I have stolen from death and death’s trine passage. ...

Narratives of Feeling and Majesty: Mediated Emotions in the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Courtroom

ABSTRACTThis article considers the role of emotion in the eighteenth-century courtroom. It discusses the work of judges and magistrates in constituting and upholding a ‘grand narrative’, which legitimized English criminal law. This grand narrative was inherently emotional, activating patriotism and love of justice, but also fear of punishment through the performance of ‘emotional labour’ from the judgment seat. However, while performing the majesty of the law, judges attempted to balance a number of complicating factors, such as the rise of sensibility, the role of the press, and their own emotions about criminal justice. The growing presence of professional counsel from the end of the century also complicated the emotional tenor of criminal trials. Moreover, the majesty of the law was undermined and even corrupted by the representation of trials and executions in the popular press. Far from viewing displays of emotion as inappropriate, it appears that many contemporaries held emotion to be an integral part of trial process, and of the majesty of the law.

Deliberative Stasis According to the Ancients, As Illustrated from Shakespeare's Henry IV

Stasis (Latin status) has proven such a fruitful inventional technique for forensic rhetoric that several modern scholars have attempted to form a parallel concept to be used in deliberative circumstances. Their results have not gotten much traction, though, probably because they have not looked to see what classical rhetoric has already provided along these lines. No concept of “deliberative stasis” was explicitly pronounced among the ancient rhetoricians. However, a reading of key rhetorical works of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian along with a couple of early modern authors indicates a general consensus upon three key issues that, taken together, would form the deliberative equivalent of forensic stasis. Following the example of Aristotle who, in his Rhetoric, made frequent reference to Greek drama for illustration, this article draws on three episodes from Shakespeare's Henry IV to show the usefulness of what I call “forestasis,” a term denominating stasis looking forward, if you will. They include the deliberation of Prince Hal about whether he should participate in the robbery at Gadshill (from early in Part I); an inferred deliberation on the part of the Chief Justice as to whether he should send the young prince to prison for striking him “in my very seat of judgment” (spoken of in Part II as happening in the past); and Hal's likely weighing of alternatives as to what to do with Falstaff once he becomes king (the banishment, of course, taking place late in Part II).

“With my Body I Thee Worship”: New Creation, Beatific Vision, and the Liturgical Consummation of all Things

“When our flesh, made glorious at the Judgment Seat, dresses us once again, then shall our persons become more pleasing in being more complete.” “Thereby shall we have increase of the light Supreme Love grants, unearned, to make us fit to hold His glory ever in our sight.”1

Medical Narrative and the Rhetoric of Identification: The Many Faces of Anna White Dildane

ABSTRACTWhen Anna White Dildane, a prostitute and heroin addict, was committed to the Laboratory of Social Hygiene (LSH) in 1917, she was treated by a staff that anticipated the methods of the biopsychosocial model later developed by Engel. That is to say, the staff members believed that Anna’s rehabilitation was contingent on a scientific diagnosis of the physical, mental, and social factors that underlay her condition. However, using Anna and the LSH as a case study, we draw from Latour to show the limitations of this “modern” method of diagnosis and treatment that persists today. Using Burke, we advocate for a pragmatic orientation focused on creating rhetorically oriented narratives whose aim is to help patients make judgments about their health and future, namely, by bringing about the experience of “form” capable of constituting new types of identification. Effective medical rhetoric thus adopts a method of persuasion that begins with the narrative and self-understanding of the patient, links aspects of that narrative with the technical expertise of physicians and other health care providers, and crafts a new, more specialized narrative attentive to the desires and constraints of a patient’s form of identification that is ultimately the seat of judgment.

Orthodox Constructions of the West. Edited by George Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papnikolaou. Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought. New York: Fordham University Press, 2013. ix + 365 pp. $125 hardcover; $35 paperback.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Orthodox Constructions of . Edited by George Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papnikolaou . Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought. New York : Fordham University Press , 2013. ix + 365 pp. $125 hardcover; $35 paperback.Book Reviews and NotesWhen Rudyard Kipling lamented that East is East, and is West, and ne'er twain shall meet, he probably did not have theological and cultural conflict of Eastern and Western Christianity in mind, but sentiment expressed in longer form of quote (Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat) adeptly captures feelings of many a historian and ecumenist. But perhaps because of this historic antagonism, need for Orthodox Christians to understand and even appropriate West, given surge of Orthodox migrants over past century and conversion of native Westerners to Eastern Christianity, is greater than at any point in past. From that impulse comes triennial conference series on East-West Schism. The present volume is result of papers delivered at 2010 edition of that conference series.The selections in volume cover a variety of different eras, ranging from tenth century to modern day, and a variety of subjects centered around theme of how Eastern Christians have and continue to understand or misunderstand their Western co-religionists. The state of question is admirably set in chapter by Demacopoulos and Papnikolaou, which introduces reader to problem constructing a view of in modern Orthodox Christianity, in no small part because so many Orthodox themselves now live in the West or at least in countries historically founded by persons from Western Europe. The authors do not propose how Orthodox Christians might better identify the Other in opposition to their own traditions, and that is part of point: that older categories are no longer as useful as they were even a century ago.Though all of contributions to this volume are excellent, there are several which deserve special recognition. Among these is overview of current state of Roman Catholic and Orthodox ecumenical relations by Robert Taft. Much of chapter is centered on past wrong of each side against other. Here, Taft is adamant and unflinching in his review of Catholic sins against Orthodox, and is equally ready to point out that Orthodox Christians have similar problems with their own behavior, concluding that what both sides need is a more realistic and less hagiographic reading of their histories. …

Childhood in Twain and Eliot

This lecture1 describes the way in which childhood and the river, as rendered in Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is absorbed and reimagined by T.S. Eliot in The Dry Salvages. Oh East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!2 Though seemingly belonging to different ends of the earth, both Eliot and Twain were born on the same patch of it, in Missouri in the nineteenth century, and each had strong ties to another patch, the east coast: Eliot’s familial, Twain’s literary and personal. Each had a beloved brother named Henry—Eliot’s older, his confidante during the bad times in his marriage and all throughout his life the preserver of his legacy; Twain’s a treasured younger brother, who sailed with him in his steamship days on the Mississippi, until his 1858 death from a riverboat explosion left Twain disconsolate and haunted. Both men had strong ties to Mother, Twain’s an eccentric, prim, Presbyterian, with occultist leanings, prone to excitement, hysteria, even self-dramatization; Eliot’s an educated, Unitarian protector, with a stern regard for the past and a propensity for poetry. Both men also had a singular and lasting literary friendship: Twain with William Dean Howells, Eliot with Ezra Pound.

Jürgen Heideking. The Constitution before the Judgment Seat: The Prehistory and Ratification of the American Constitution. Trans. and ed., John P. Kaminky and Richard Leffler. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. Pp. xxviii+552. $45.00.

Jürgen Heideking. <i>The Constitution before the Judgment Seat: The Prehistory and Ratification of the American Constitution</i>. Trans. and ed., John P. Kaminky and Richard Leffler. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. Pp. xxviii+552. $45.00.

The Constitution Goes Public: Politics and the Ratification Debate

The Constitution Goes Public: Politics and the Ratification Debate Todd Estes (bio) Jürgen Heideking. The Constitution before the Judgment Seat: The Prehistory and Ratification of the American Constitution, 1787–1791. Ed. John P. Kaminski and Richard Leffler. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. xxviii + 552 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $45.00. This is a propitious time to be studying the U.S. Constitution and its ratification. The invaluable Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, an ongoing, multivolume project based at the University of Wisconsin, makes available to scholars nearly everything published or written, publicly or privately, pertaining to ratification. Pauline Maier’s impressive study, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution (2010), which draws heavily on the Documentary History, provides a solid analytical narrative of the process of ratification focusing on the state conventions. Still other works—some recently published, others in progress—address related constitutional matters and offer additional perspectives. And now comes this book, originally published in German in 1988, its content only partially available until now, and its publication long anticipated by students of the Founding.1 These newer works are welcome because the ratification debate, despite its significance, has had a spotty and frustrating historiographical record. Robert Rutland’s The Ordeal of the Constitution (1966; rev. ed. 1983) was uneven, extremely quirky and impressionistic, largely undocumented, and it focused mostly on the anti-Federalists. Some of the best work came in a pair of edited collections on ratification in the individual states that appeared around the time of the bicentennial of the Constitution. Both collections contained able treatments but neither offered a larger interpretive overview of ratification. Various articles and dissertations, the fugitive chapter or two in random collections, and some review essays all made contributions here and there, but there was still no comprehensive treatment of ratification until the fortuitous appearance of Maier’s book and of this volume.2 The story of this book’s publication history is marked by both persistence and tragedy. The original work was published in German in 1988 after the author had spent considerable time in Madison in regular contact with the [End Page 213] Documentary History editors, who included John P. Kaminski and Richard Leffler. Following German publication, Heideking again worked with Kaminski and Leffler to revise the work and sought grants to publish in English, originally with Madison House, then Rowman and Littlefield. But, tragically, Heideking was killed in an automobile accident in 2000, and the project stalled until Kaminski and Leffler stepped back in as editors and helped secure funding and then publication from the University of Virginia Press. Heideking’s original efforts, and subsequently those of his Wisconsin friends after his death, have now paid off in this significant work. With a grasp of the history that is impressive and sure-handed, Heideking locates the debate over the Constitution against the broad sweep of early America from the Revolution through the early republic and is also alert to the place of U.S. history in the grand scheme of world history. His account of ratification connects the debate back in time to the Revolution and then traces its story past ratification into the celebratory festivals of 1788, the first congressional elections, and the debates over amendments. This book makes a number of specific, contextualized arguments about various aspects of ratification rather than pushing a single overarching thesis. But if there is a larger argument to the work, it is that Heideking casts the Federalists as “the revolutionaries of 1787–88 . . . [who] knew they would have to break with all established modes of thought and political language to succeed” (p. 134). But theirs was a revolution ironically intended (almost conservatively) “to achieve stability, order, security, and predictability” (p. 134). The anti-Federalists, in contrast, were still fastened to an older world-view and were anxious rather than hopeful about change. To their minds, Heideking writes, “America was on the verge of imitating all the mistakes already endured by Europeans” (p. 133), and this drove their opposition to the document. Rather than being a social or a class struggle, ratification “was more a clash between two distinct attitudes, mentalities, and political cultures shaped by...

The Constitution Before the Judgment Seat: The Prehistory and Ratification of the American Constitution, 1787-91 by Jürgen Heideking (review)

The Constitution Before the Judgment Seat: The Prehistory and Ratification of the American Constitution, 1787-91. By Jurgen Heideking, ed. John P. Kaminski and Richard Leffler. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. Pp. 584. Cloth, $45.00.)Reviewed by David J. SiemersThe Constitution Before the Judgment Seat is a revised version of Jurgen Heideking's award-winning 1988 book, which was originally published in German. Heideking was preparing the manuscript for release in English in 2000, the year he died tragically in a car accident. Twelve years later, thanks to editors John P. Kaminski and Richard Leffler, Heideking's work is finally available in English.The long delay in the appearance of this book prompts some unusual questions: Can a book nearly a quarter-century old make fresh contributions to the study of the ratification of the Constitution? Have its arguments been replicated (or refuted) by other scholars? Can a book retroactively achieve the status of a classic work in the field if few scholars have ever had a chance to read it? In short, what is the status and utility of a book which, because of very unusual circumstances, appears before us as if out of a time machine?Gladly, this book shows few signs of wear. The Constitution Before the Judgment Seat instantly becomes the most definitive one-volume account of the Constitution's ratification. It becomes so not just for its accuracy but also because of its scope. Heideking admirably sets context, providing background information on conditions in the immediate postRevolution period, on public and elite attitudes and ideologies, and on the nature of private correspondence and public dialogue during the era. He also extends his analysis forward, including chapters on the festive culture that celebrated ratification and on the process that eventually produced the Bill of Rights. In between are two long chapters on Party Formation and Convention Elections and State Ratifying Conventions.In each matter it tackles the book is full of original quotes from a breathtaking array of sources. Heideking was among the initial set of scholars to take advantage of the compilations offered by several modern documentary history projects, and it shows. His own observations are rigorously backed by the documentary record, rarely speculative, and almost always sound. Because it appears now, however, the book is not particularly path breaking. With few exceptions Heideking reinforces what we already know (or at least what we think we know) about the ratification era. Thus established scholars may find this book's use primarily as a quicker reference to essential source material than the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution and as a source of clear, sound summary quotes.Nevertheless, a generation of graduate students will be reading this book with great profit. They will also, no doubt, be assigned projects that will outline the subsequent historiography of one of the topics it treats and then define a new project of their own in that area. The work's sheer breadth opens many such avenues. By contrast, recent scholarship has tended to break down the Constitution's founding into smaller constituent pieces. That is a logical historiographical progression, as scholars produce more fine-grained analyses. The appearance of The Constitution Before the Judgment Seat is a reminder of the significant integrative value of more comprehensive approaches.So many works pertaining to the subject matter of this book have been written since 1988 that it is impossible to do justice to them. …

JURGEN HEIDEKING. The Constitution before the Judgment Seat: The Prehistory and Ratification of the American Constitution, 1787-1791.

JURGEN HEIDEKING. The Constitution before the Judgment Seat: The Prehistory and Ratification of the American Constitution, 1787-1791.

The Constitution before the judgment seat: the prehistory and ratification of the American Constitution, 1787-1791

Originally published in German in 1988, the late Jurgen Heideking's exhaustive study of the debates over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution compares the methods used to call state ratifying conventions and explores everything that made up the ratification debate, from town meetings and festive culture to private correspondence and print media. In Heideking's view, the construction of a new political process was an unintended but key result of ratification debates over the federal Constitution. Heideking's work anticipated diverse strands of subsequent scholarship; this translation can claim to provide not only an invaluable account of the ratification debates but also a master narrative for integrating future studies.