FW: Why not the Jeffersonian Constitution?

[Calvin Johnson]

To: 'rjlipkin at aol.com'
Subject: Why not the Jeffersonian Constitution?


    If it is a written Constitution we are bound by, then the ink was
dry on Sept. 18, 1787, and Federalists wrote it, as a weapon to
accomplish some needed reforms.   The anti-nationalist Anti-Federalists
did not like the Constitution and they tried to beat it, but by the
ratificaiton they lost.  The grand history of America including the
Jefferson Revolution of 1800 of course defines who we are as Americans.
We were a slaveholder republic from 1800 to 1860.   But a lot of water
has gone over the dam since Jefferson, thank God, and we are no longer
bound by the disgraceful parts of our tradition.  We seem to be bound by
mistakes in ink that was dry on Sept. 18, for instance, the
malapportionment of the Senate.
 
Calvin H. Johnson 
Andrews & Kurth Centennial Professor of Law
The University of Texas School of Law
727 E. Dean Keeton (26th)  St.
Austin, TX  78705
(512) 232-1306  (voice)
FAX: (512) 232-2399
Website: http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/cvs/chj7107_cv.pdf
For reviews, chapters, discounts and news on Johnson, Righteous Anger at
the Wicked States: The Meaning of the Founders Constitution (Cambridge
University Press 2005) see
http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/calvinjohnson/RighteousAnger/
 

 
     One final and only tangentially related question: Why do we
consider the Federalists to be "the Founders" when they seem to have
been repudiated during the first few decades of the nineteenth century?
Thus, arguably one might contend that subsequent constitutional and
political development shows that the Federalists conception of the
Constitution was mistaken and the Republicans' conception correct.
Another sophomoric question? 
 
Bobby 

Robert Justin Lipkin
Professor of Law
Widener University School of Law
Delaware
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