Word: american
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Dates: during 1880-1889
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...Cohn thought that the great difficulty in investigation in the United States was the lack of original sources of all European, and of early American history. These records are all in Europe and contain a great mass of unpublished matter. By consulting these documents, an investigator in the old Counties is sure to be rewarded for his labor by some discovery...
...rapidly increasing number of works on political history and science is the volume under the above title. from the pen of Woodrow Wilson, Fellow of Johns Hopkins. The work is a clearly written exposition of the method by which our governmental machinery is run. The majority of American voters have but a crude conception of the labors which lie before each incoming congress, and a still more indefinite idea of the way in which these labors are performed. It is with interest, and often with surprise, that one reads the description of the extraordinary powers conferred upon the House committees...
...fact that amendments carried in the legislature are usually rejected by the mass of the people The magic of self-love increases the respect felt for it ; but it is weakened by becoming a less adequate expression of the growing people's needs. The two great defects of the American Constitution are the absence of a uniform law of marriage, and the method of electing a president ; but so complicated is the machinery for altering the constitution that a reform in these points is hardly possible...
...before 1865, but the particular states afforded many instances of narrowed legislative competency. Some states, e. g. Lomsiana, South Carolina, Georgia, have had as many as five constitutions. Contrary to our experience of corporate bodies, in whose charters general wording leaves room for the framing of byelaws, the newer American constitutions embody much criminal, family and police law. Such constitutions frequently need amending...
...rigid constitution ? In America the constitution is found in every house and taught in every school, and can be read aloud in seventeen minutes. The consequence of this is that politics tend to become legal, and the Bar has far more importance than in England, where Parliament is omnipotent. Americans often say that their whole political history has been a struggle of strict as against loose constructionists. It is only fair to say that the American constitution works well, because it was imposed on a people educated in English legal habits. Hence the very conservative tone prevailing in America...