John Dinan | Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.4

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John Dinan | Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

America's Jeffersonian Experiment: Remaking State Constitutions, 1820–1850. By Laura J. Scalia. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1999. xxiv, 218 pp. $36.00, ISBN 0-87580-244-3.)

Although at one time scholars followed James Bryce in viewing state constitutions as "a mine of instruction for the natural history of democratic communities," late-twentieth-century scholars have been more preoccupied with the national constitution; with the exception of a number of studies of the initial wave of late-eighteenth-century state constitutions, they have not paid as much attention to state constitutional development during other eras in American history. America's Jeffersonian Experiment represents one of several recent efforts to give renewed attention to the state constitutional tradition, and Laura J. Scalia is particularly concerned with mining the debates of ten early-nineteenth-century conventions for instruction about the political thought of the post-founding generation and about the consequences of permitting frequent constitutional revision. . . .

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