The Complete Bill of Rights: The Drafts, Debates, Sources, and Origins [Hardcover]

Neil H. Cogan (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 019510322X | ISBN-13: 978-0195103229 | Publication Date: October 16, 1997

The fundamental, inalienable rights and privileges set forth in the Bill of Rights represent the very foundations of American liberty. The Complete Bill of Rights is a documentary record of the process by which these rights and privileges were defined and recorded as law.
Neil H. Cogan incorporates all pertinent materials from the debate on the ratification of the Bill of Rights. Arranged in chronological order, the work presents each clause in its finished form, and traces its development from its origins. Cogan presents every draft of the text and every documentary source, including state convention proposals, state, colonial, and English constitutional texts, sources in caselaw and treatises. He includes data from diaries and correspondence, pamphlets and newspapers, as well as the Congressional debates. He publishes, for the first time, each version of the drafts from the manuscript collections of the National Archives and Library of Congress. The result is the most detailed and useful record of the debate over the Bill of Rights available.
Including the correspondence of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams among many others who debated the issues that the Supreme Court considers law today, The Complete Bill of Rights is the first and only comprehensive collection of texts essential to understanding the Bill of Rights. Organized in an accessible and practical manner, it is an invaluable tool for law students, judges, lawyers, and law clerks, as well as scholars of the law, history, and political science.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Every reference library should have a copy."--The Law and Politics Book Review

"All academic research libraries should buy this book."--Choice

"For anyone interested in our Constitution, our history, or our political theory, this book is an intellectual treasure chest. It is more than legislative history. It is constitution-drafting in the raw--all the proposals and all the give-and-take (some of it disturbing) that resulted in the adoption of the Bill of Rights."--Floyd A. Abrams, Partner, Cahill Gordon and Reindel

"This wonderful collection offers one-stop shopping for the serious student of the Bill of Rights, for the casual reader, and for everyone in between."--Akhil Reed Amar, Southmayd Professor of Law, Yale Law School

"This book is an invaluable resource for constitutional scholars, teachers, litigators, and judges alike. It collects and collates the basic texts necessary for informed interpretation of the Bill of Rights and gives them to researchers in a compact, comprehensive, and reliable form that is wonderfully organized for both quick scanning and sustained critical analysis. It makes previously difficult research tasks easy and opens new lines of thinking at a glance."-- Anthony G. Amsterdam, Judge Edward Weinfeld Professor and Director, Lawyering Program, New York University Law School

"What a treasure. In one volume, everything any constitutional scholar, lawyer, or history buff needs to know about the origins of our Bill of Rights. Now the debate about how these amendments should be interpreted can really begin."--Alan M. Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor, Harvard Law School

"The Complete Bill of Rights is a major occasion in American publishing. This volume will take its place on the reference shelf next to Farrand, Elliott, Storing, Kurland, and Lerner as essential to the understanding of the American constitutional tradition. Never before has it been possible to think seriously and completely about the text of the Bill of Rights, for never before have all of the texts relating to the final version of the Bill of Rights been easily and accurately accessible in one reference work. This is a triumph of careful and thoughtful scholarship. It is now one of the essential components of the library of constitutionalism. It will never be out of date."--Stanley N. Katz, President, American Council of Learned Societies

" . . . all students of the Constitution will find this a helpful and provocative work."--Pergamon

" . . .The Complete Bill of Rights contribute[s] significantly to our undersranding of a towering constitutional document that plays a major role in determining our national identity . . . "--Wisconsin Magazine of History

"...The Complete Bill of Rights is, by any reasonable standard of measurement, a magnificent accomplishment . . .[it] is likely to become the standard source book for those seeking to ground their examination of the issues posed by the first ten amendments in the original source materials describing their drafting, discussion and ratification."--Michigan Law Review

About the Author

Neil H. Cogan is at Quinnipiac College School of Law.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 768 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (October 16, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 019510322X
• ISBN-13: 978-0195103229
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.5 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,510,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A national treasure!, December 12, 2000

By 

"emilyxyz" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Bill of Rights: The Drafts, Debates, Sources, and Origins (Hardcover)

It's hard to believe they let this one run out...it should be permanently in print. Cogan has done us all the great service of compiling a number of original-source texts related to the origins and debates that led up to the Bill of Rights. Delightfully, he stays out of it, and just presents the source materials, most of which most of us would never know existed or mattered if not for the way this book presents them. Drafts, relevant sections of various state constitutions, even newspaper articles of the day related to the Bill of Rights debates, are included. This is a big book and a little demanding, but well worth it if you are really interested in seeing how the Bill of Rights came into being.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cautions to Laypeople, May 1, 2007

By 

JNagarya (Reality) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Bill of Rights: The Drafts, Debates, Sources, and Origins (Hardcover)

This has got to be the publisher's blurb, or a representation by someone who doesn't know the literature in this area, in view of innaccuracies and exaggerations, to which I'll limit myself:

"The fundamental, inalienable rights and privileges set forth in the Bill of Rights represent the very foundations of American liberty."

In fact, there are rights contained in the body of the Constitution itself -- not only in the later-adopted Bill of Rights.

"Cogan presents every draft of the text and every documentary source, including state convention proposals, state, colonial, and English constitutional texts . . . ."

The closest to "English constitutional texts" and sources for the Constitution and Bill of Rights were those as evolved through more than one hundred years on the American continent, one of the causes of the "revolution" having been the fact that the colonies, especially that of Massachusetts-Bay, had established more "freedoms" than their several charters allowed. Thus the sources were the colony's own legal history, which to that point had eventuated in their several state constitutions and bills of rights.

"He includes data from diaries and correspondence, pamphlets and newspapers, as well as the Congressional debates."

It is crucial for the layperson to understand a basic standard of law: the distinction between non-law -- diaries, correspondence, etc. -- and legal authority, in this instance the debates, which are legislative history. All the "supplementary" non-law materials are of historical importance, and to provide context; but they do not enter into interpretation of the law itself. Our laws, per the Constitution, are made by the Congress, not by elected officials acting as individuals, or outside the legislature, and not by the unelected.

"He publishes, for the first time, each version of the drafts from the manuscript collections of the National Archives and Library of Congress."

False. Bernard Schwartz, in _The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History_; and Helen E. Veit, Kenneth R. Bowling, and Charlene Bangs Bickford, in _Creating the Bill of Rights: The Documentary Record from the First Federal Congress_, did so in 1985 and 1991, respectively. One should also see Conley and Kaminski, _The Bill of Rights and the States_, and Rutland, _The Birth of the Bill of Rights._.

"_The Complete Bill of Rights_ is the first and only comprehensive collection of texts essential to understanding the Bill of Rights."

An exaggeration in view of the foregoing caveats, especially the crucial distinction between legal authority -- the debates -- on one hand, and on the other everything else. With those caveats in mind, it is nonetheless invaluable, and should become a standard reference along with the others cited.

6 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Former Student of Dean Cogan, March 11, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Complete Bill of Rights: The Drafts, Debates, Sources, and Origins (Hardcover)

I believe I speak for many of Dean Cogan's former constitutional law students. Dean Cogan used his constitutional law students as lab rats while writing his book and over half of the students dropped out of his class. The few remaining students were forced to re-learn constitutional law while taking their Bar Review class!