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The Anti-Federalists’ Toughest Challenge: Paper Money, Debt Relief, And The Ratification Of The Constitution, George Van Cleve Jan 2014

The Anti-Federalists’ Toughest Challenge: Paper Money, Debt Relief, And The Ratification Of The Constitution, George Van Cleve

Faculty Articles

During the mid-1780s many American states facing widespread financial and social instability in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War actively managed their economies. They authorized paper money, adopted debtor-relief measures, or both. Several historians of these anti-recession measures conclude that such efforts were beneficial. But despite that, the Constitution, as contemporaries understood it, abrogated state powers to issue paper money or provide debtor relief in Article I, Section 10. During ratification, Anti-Federalists were often silent on Section 10, though there were exceptions and popular support for paper money and debtor relief probably prevented ratification in some states. Anti-Federalists did not …


Universities As Constitutional Law Makers (And Other Hidden Actors In Our Constitutional Orders), Adam J. Macleod Jan 2014

Universities As Constitutional Law Makers (And Other Hidden Actors In Our Constitutional Orders), Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

In the stories told by opinion makers and many law professors, American constitutional law is concerned with two things-individual rights and the powers of government-and it is settled by the Court, which was established by Article III of our national Constitution. In those now-familiar tales, the United States Supreme Court creates constitutional law when heroic individuals assert their fundamental rights against an overreaching state and when Congress, state legislatures, and executive agencies are called upon to justify their expert enactments to an overreaching judiciary. To settle these constitutional disputes the Court looks either to the text of the written Constitution …