Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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!