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The Balance Of Forces And The Empire Of Liberty: States' Rights And The Louisiana Purchase, Robert Knowles

Law Faculty Publications

This Article challenges the conventional wisdom about the Louisiana Treaty and argues that it was unconstitutional. As many students of history know, President Jefferson had serious misgivings about its constitutionality, which scholars have dismissed as driven by an overly strict construction of the Constitution. The Article concludes that Jefferson's concerns were in fact motivated primarily by respect for federalism principles.

This Article identifies and discusses the underlying conflict between two radically different visions of federalism. While Jefferson s Republicans believed that the incorporation of new states in the West would merely expand the Constitutions form of government to more territory, …