The Civic Constitution provides a compelling case for rethinking the U.S. Constitution. By exploring pivotal struggles over governmental power, individual rights, and the boundaries of citizenship, this book challenges reigning approaches and reveals the profound importance of 'civic founders' who worked to reinvent the constitutional order.

What are the philosophical and historical foundations of the American political system? -- How did the framers create the Constitution? -- How has the Constitution been changed to further the ideals contained in the Declaration of Independence? -- How have the values and principles embodied in the Constitution shaped American institutions and practices? -- What rights does the Bill of Rights protect? -- What challenges might face American constitutional democracy in the twenty-first century? -- Reference.

Bold and unconventional, this book advocates for an institutional turn-about in the relationship between democracy and constitutionalism.

This book focuses on gender and civic membership in American constitutional politics from the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment through Second Wave Feminism. It examines how American civic membership is gendered, and how the terms of civic membership available to men and women shape their political identities, aspirations, and behavior. The book also explores the dynamics of American constitutional development through a focus on civic membership--a legal and political construct at the heart of the constitutional order. This is a book about gender politics and constitutional development, and about what each of these can tell us about the other. It considers the options and choices faced by women’s rights activists in the United States as they voiced their claims for civic inclusion from Reconstruction through Second Wave Feminism, and it makes evident the limits of liberal citizenship for women.

An examination of American political life and culture by six distinguished scholars: J. David Greenstone, Robert N. Bellah, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Michael Novak, Michael Walzer, and Robert E. Calvert. The introduction is by Wilson Carey McWilliams. Four of the six essays were originally delivered as lectures at a Spring 1987 symposium at DePauw U. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

"Learn About the United States" is intended to help permanent residents gain a deeper understanding of U.S. history and government as they prepare to become citizens. The product presents 96 short lessons, based on the sample questions from which the civics portion of the naturalization test is drawn. An audio CD that allows students to listen to the questions, answers, and civics lessons read aloud is also included. For immigrants preparing to naturalize, the chance to learn more about the history and government of the United States will make their journey toward citizenship a more meaningful one.

The U. S. Constitution begins with the soaring words “We the People,” but we, the people, have little to do with the document as most of us have come to know it. When most people think of the constitution they think of it as a legal instrument, the province of judges and lawyers, who alone possess the expertise and knowledge necessary to discern its elusive and complex meaning. This book outlines a very different view of the Constitution as a moral and philosophical statement about who we are as a nation. This “Civic Constitution” constitutes us as a civic body politic, transforming “the people” into a singular political entity. Juxtaposing this view with the legal model, the “Juridic Constitution,” John E. Finn offers a comprehensive account of the Civic Constitution as a public affirmation of the shared principles of national self-identity, and as a particular vision of political community in which we the people play a significant and ongoing role in achieving a constitutional way of life. The Civic Constitution is the constitution of dialogical engagement, of contested meanings, of political principles, of education, of conversation. Peopling the Constitution seeks nothing less than a new interpretation of the American constitutional project in an effort to revive a robust understanding of citizenship. It considers the entire constitutional project, from its founding and maintenance to its failure, with insights into topics ranging from the practice of deliberative democracy and the meaning of citizenship, to constitutional fidelity, civic virtue, the separation of powers, federalism, and constitutional interpretation. The Civic Constitution, in Finn’s telling, is primarily a political project requiring an active, engaged, and most importantly, constitutionally educated citizenry committed to the civic virtues of civility and tending. When we as citizens are unwilling or unable to tend to and sustain the Constitution, and when constitutional questions reduce to legal questions and obscure civic interests, constitutional rot results. And in post-9/11 America, Finn argues, constitutional rot has begun to set in. With its multi-dimensional vision of constitutional governance, Finn's book stands as a corrective to accounts that locate the Constitution in and conceive it essentially as a legal instrument, making a powerful and impassioned argument for restoring the people to their rightful place in the politics and practice of the Constitution.