LYCOS RETRIEVER
Constitutionalism: Laws
built 290 days ago
Constitutionalism is the limitation of government by law, as prescribed by a constitution. Constitutionalism implies ... a balance between the power of the government on the one hand and the rights of individuals on the other.
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The term Constitutionalism refers to the position or practice that government be limited by a constitution, usually written. The document may specify its relation to statutes, treaties, executive and judicial actions, and the constitutions or laws of regional jurisdictions. The term may ... refer to a movement or effort to enforce such a legal order, usually called constitutional compliance. Constitutionalism is also concerned with the principles of constitutional design, which includes the principle that the field of public action be partitioned between delegated powers to the government and the rights of individuals, each of which is a restriction of the other, and that no powers be delegated that are beyond the competence of government.
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Constitutionalism in twentiethâ€century America continued to be largely juridical and increasingly policy oriented. Limited government constitutionalism, grounded in natural rights principles and protective of entrepreneurial liberty and property, persisted until 1937. Political demands for a more socially responsive rule of law that were first asserted in the Progressive period came to fruition in the New Deal era. The consequence was a general questioning of the nineteenthâ€century view of limited government and the expansion of government activism in social and economic regulation.
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Jutting out of the wreakage called Constitutionalism are certain more elevated piles, such as "Common Law" and "Magna Carta." These are, if in no better repair than the rest of the ruins, at least of respectable antiquity. Back when little was known of English legal history -- when history as a discipline scarcely existed -- ingenious jurists like Selden, Coke and Hale manipulated these hoary myths to win some limited victories over royal absolutism. Even if Constitutionalists were juridical Jack Kennedys and not, as they are, Dan Quayles, the conditions for getting away with pious lying about these parts of the past no longer obtain. Good history does not necessarily overthrow legal orthodoxy, but by now bad history never does. So unprincipled are judges and lawyers that they will even tell the truth if it serves their purposes.
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