Mr. Gary Lawson, Mr. Guy Seidman9780300102314, 0-300-10231-3
The Constitution of Empire offers a constitutional and historical survey of American territorial expansion from the founding era to the present day. The authors describe the Constitution’s design for territorial acquisition and governance and examine the ways in which practice over the past two hundred years has diverged from that original vision. Noting that most of America’s territorial acquisitions-including the Louisiana Purchase, the Alaska Purchase, and the territory acquired after the Mexican-American and Spanish-American Wars-resulted from treaties, the authors elaborate a Jeffersonian-based theory of the federal treaty power and assess American territorial acquisitions from this perspective. They find that at least one American acquisition of territory and many of the basic institutions of territorial governance have no constitutional foundation, and they explore the often-strange paths that constitutional law has traveled to permit such deviations from the Constitution’s original meaning. |
Table of contents :
Contents……Page 8
Acknowledgments……Page 10
Introduction: From Sea to Shining Sea … and Beyond……Page 14
Part I. Acquiring Territory……Page 28
1. Fundamentals: Lessons from Louisiana……Page 30
2. Forms: Trouble with Texas?……Page 99
3. Limits: Conquest and Colonialism……Page 116
Part II. Governing Territory……Page 132
4. Constitutional Architecture I:Territorial Legislatures and Executives……Page 134
5. Constitutional Architecture II: Territorial Courts……Page 152
6. War and Peace: Military Occupation and Governance……Page 164
7. Bulwark or Façade? The Rights of Territorial Inhabitants……Page 201
Conclusion: Imperial Reflections……Page 215
Notes……Page 220
Index……Page 270 |
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