Joseph W Postell

"From the founding, Americans' contests over the Constitution and what it should mean for their actions have profoundly shaped the country's political direction. With a cast of characters ranging from Montesquieu, Adams, and Henry Clay, to the transcendentalists, Cherokee freedmen, and modern identitarians, this book brings an interdisciplinary group of scholars to the task of forwarding discussion on American political thought and American political development. The result is a volume raising as many questions as it answers, especially about the themes of membership and civic virtue"--

"The rise of the administrative state is the most significant political development in American politics over the past century. While our Constitution separates powers into three branches, and requires that the laws are made by elected representatives in the Congress, today most policies are made by unelected officials in agencies where legislative, executive, and judicial powers are combined. This threatens constitutionalism and the rule of law. This book examines the history of administrative power in America and argues that modern administrative law has failed to protect the principles of American constitutionalism as effectively as earlier approaches to regulation and administration"--Publisher's website.

Thomas Jefferson called The Federalist Papers ""the best commentary on the principles of government, which ever was written."" Over 200 years after the writing of these essays, most commentators-liberal and conservative-still agree.While The Federalist is indeed an important resource for understanding the meaning of our Constitution, its relevance is based on something deeper. The author of the essays knew the principles as part of the immediate political struggle for ratification.In this monograph, Anthony Peacock, professor of political science at Utah State University, offers us a brief gui

During the Progressive Era (1880-1920), leading thinkers and politicians transformed American politics. Historians and political scientists have given a great deal of attention to the progressives who effected this transformation. Yet relatively little is known about the conservatives who opposed these progressive innovations, despite the fact that they played a major role in the debates and outcomes of this period of American history. These early conservatives represent a now-forgotten source of inspiration for modern American conservatism. This volume gives these constitutional conservatives their first full explanation and demonstrates their ongoing relevance to contemporary American conservatism.

The recent economic crisis in the United States has highlighted a crisis of understanding. In this volume, Bradley C.S. Watson and Joseph Postell bring together some of America's most eminent thinkers on political economy--an increasingly overlooked field wherein political ideas and economic theories mutually inform each other. Only through a restoration of political economy can we reconnect economics to the human good. Economics as a discipline deals with the production and distribution of goods and services. Yet the study of economics can--indeed must--be employed in our striving for the best possible political order and way of life. Economic thinkers and political actors need once again to consider how the Constitution and basic principles of our government might give direction and discipline to our thinking about economic theories, and to the economic policies we choose to implement. The contributors are experts in economic history, and the history of economic ideas. They address basic themes of political economy, theoretical and practical: from the relationship between natural law and economics, to how our Founding Fathers approached economics, to questions of banking and monetary policy. Their insights will serve as trusty guides to future generations, as well as to our own.