Constitutionalism: Ancient And Modern - Softcover

McIlwain, Charles Howard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1258129426 ISBN 13: 9781258129422

Publisher: Literary Licensing, LLC, 2011

Synopsis

Charles Howard McIlwain (1871–1968) was a highly regarded scholar of Anglo-American constitutional history, and won the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for History. Unlike the emerging progressive historians of the early 20th century, McIlwain credited constitutional forces more than economics as a motive for the American Revolution.

McIlwain’s best known book is Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern, which explores the very roots of liberty by examining the development of modern constitutionalism from its ancient and medieval origins. Derived from a series of lectures delivered by McIlwain at Cornell University in the 1938-39 academic year, the work provides a solid introduction to the development of modern constitutional forms.

McIlwain explores what he calls “the two fundamental correlative elements of constitutionalism for which all lovers of liberty must yet fight - the legal limits to arbitrary power and a complete political responsibility of government to the governed.” Despotic power has risen to challenge constitutional governments in many countries, and within this text, McIlwain shows how constitutional safeguards that have been set against government by force have grown in the Western world. McIlwain also outlines the general principles of constitutionalism, especially as an Anglo-American tradition, and traces its development from the law and custom of the Roman Republic through the English common law to the establishment of America's constitutional government.

This edition of Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern is specially formatted with a Table of Contents.

About this edition

• Publisher: Literary Licensing, LLC
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1258129426
• ISBN 13: 9781258129422
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 172