Book Review

Oft-neglected by political and legal historians, state constitutions--and the conventions that created them--reveal much about the eras in which they were formed. This is perhaps most true for the period between the ratification of the Constitution and the onset of the Civil War when every state replaced (or sought to replace or amend) its revolutionary-era constitution. But unlike the first state constitutions, which have attracted a few devoted historians and political scientists, the antebellum documents have generally lacked serious scholarly attention. The richness of these sources, however, has not escaped Laura J. Scalia, a political scientist trained at Yale under Rogers Smith. Her book--a revision of her doctoral dissertation--focuses on the debates that took place in ten constitutional conventions in seven states during the period 1820 to 1851 (Iowa [2], Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New York [2], Ohio, and Virginia [2]). The debates in these conventions covered a wide range of subjects, but Scalia has focused on one category: "those proposals aimed at altering the people's direct political influence, particularly those that would affect their electoral influence in and over the three branches of government" (6). By doing so, she hopes to follow the ways in which Americans balanced their allegiance to private rights (the Madisionian view in her categorization) and popular sovereignty (the Jeffersonian preference) during the first half of the nineteenth century.	1
Scalia's book is divided into two parts. Part One discusses the debates over defining rights. In the first chapter, "The Origin of Rights," Scalia--lumping the delegates at the ten conventions into the categories of reformers and antireformers--notes how each group justified its position by articulating conflicting understandings of the creation of rights. "Expansionists" (the reformers) "relied on nature's principles: as they saw it, each right that originated in nature deserved protection" (46). "Restrictionists" (the antireformers) "posited that rights derived their legitimacy from agreements, traditions, and constitutions" (46). Chapter two, "Reformers and Popular Sovereignty," describes how the reformers intertwined private rights with political voice. Political voice was an inherent right that derived from the same sources as private rights and deserved the same protections; antireformers disputed this. Chapter three, "Antireformers and Property," shows how many antireformers elevated property above all other private rights. Scalia concludes that "[w]riters of nineteenth-century constitutions never denied that good government protected inalienable private rights and popular sovereignty. Theirs was a debate over emphasis, not fundamentality" (95).	2
Part Two of America's Jeffersonian Experiment traces the debates over protecting rights. Chapter four, "Virtue and Government," describes how both restrictionists and expansionists agreed that virtue was essential to political leadership and that institutional design alone would not preserve free government. The two groups differed, however, as to how to attain that goal. Restrictionists believed that only continued limitations on the suffrage would ensure the election of good men: "Leaders reflected the interests and attachments of those who selected them. If voters lacked any commitment . . . , then leaders and the policies they passed would reflect these same sentiments, including any problematic features embedded in them" (116). According to this logic, some government officials, particularly judges, should be kept entirely free of popular influence, lest there be no one to check the popular (and, thus, inherently self-interested) elements in government. Expansionists, on the other hand, denied that restricting the suffrage or limiting popular influence would achieve the goal of good government; instead, "the character of ordinary citizens. . . . [their] willingness to fight for the state, their ability to know good laws and follow them, their ability to recognize and choose high-quality officials whenever the opportunity arose, together explained the success of America's state republics" (130). Relatedly, chapter five, "Human Nature and Good Citizenship," shows how "those who supported ongoing restrictions to the people's political power tied human nature and the characteristics of good citizenship . . . economic prosperity through hard work and the accumulation of property," while "those supporting the extension of popular power usually dismissed any inexorable link between good citizenship and private interests and activities" (133).	3
Scalia's reading of the convention debates is close and careful, and she provides insights into the ways in which Americans in the first half of the nineteenth century altered older conceptualizations of the novel political system that had been created after the Revolution. Most importantly, she shows how the important questions of the founding era continued to be discussed long after that generation waned, something that lawyers and historians too easily forget today.	4
But Scalia sticks so close to the convention debates that, if one did not know better, it would seem as if these conventions took place in a vacuum. Scalia pays little, if any, regard to the role of political parties (either local or national) or to the major political issues of the day (most notably, slavery); one strives in vain to find any reference in the endnotes to the popular press, in which the matters discussed in the convention were widely and fiercely debated throughout the period; and though the seven states she chose to concentrate on are all sound and sensible choices, she leaves out any discussion of the state where the issues she discusses were the most hotly contested--Rhode Island. Further, historians--who have by now largely given up the strange quest to place American political and constitutional thought within purported ideological traditions--will be perplexed by Scalia's persistent, and less than convincing, attempts throughout the book--and especially in the introduction and the conclusion--to categorize and generalize the developments she describes as "Madisonian," "Jeffersonian," and "Liberal."	5
For those who can get beyond the political science overlay, Scalia's book provides a very helpful introduction to a part of American constitutional history that deserves more attention.	6
Jacob Katz Cogan Princeton University

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