Andrew Jackson and the Structure: The Rise and Fall of Generational Regimes

What occurs when the political concepts and constitutional interpretations of 1 era are changed by these of one other? This course of has occurred all through American historical past down to the current day as “we the individuals” change our minds about how we govern ourselves. Depicting a monumental conflict of generations, Gerard Magliocca reminds us as soon as once more how our Structure stays a dwelling doc.

Magliocca reinterprets the authorized landmarks of the Jacksonian period to exhibit how the which means of the Structure evolves in a cyclical and predictable vogue. He highlights the ideological battles fought by Jacksonian Democrats towards Federalists and Republicans over states’ rights, presidential authority, the scope of federal energy, and different points. By doing so he reveals how presidential politics, Supreme Courtroom choices, and congressional maneuverings interweave, making a recurrent sample of constitutional change.

Magliocca builds on the view that main modifications in American political and constitutional improvement happen generationally—in roughly thirty-year intervals—and transfer from dominant regime to the emergence of a counter-regime. Specializing in a interval largely uncared for in research of such change, he affords a lucid introduction to the political and authorized historical past of the antebellum period whereas tracing Jackson’s outstanding consolidation of energy within the govt department.

The Jacksonian motion grew out of discontent over the expansion of federal energy and the safety given Native People on the expense of frontier whites, and Magliocca considers such points to assist his argument. He examines Jackson’s defeat of the Financial institution of the US, reveals how his conflict with the Marshall Courtroom over the Cherokee “downside” in
Worcester v. Georgia sparked the revival of abolitionist tradition and foreshadowed the Fourteenth Modification, and in addition affords a brand new take a look at
Dred Scott,
M’Culloch v. Maryland, judicial overview, and presidential vetoes. His evaluation reveals how the interplay of reformers and conservatives drives change and the way rough-and-tumble politics shapes our Republic greater than the creativity of judicial choices.

Providing intriguing parallels between Jackson and George W. Bush concerning the scope of govt energy, Magliocca has produced a wealthy synthesis of historical past, political science, and regulation that revives our understanding of a whole period and its controversies, whereas offering a mannequin of constitutional regulation relevant to any interval.