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.

• Acknowledgments


• Key to Abbreviations


• Introduction


• 1 : The Civic Constitution


• Part One: Revisiting the 18th Century Founding


• 2 : Making Liberty Popular


• Revolutionaries' "Common Sense " Popular Constitutionalism and New State Republics


• 3 : The Unfinished Constitution


• Quarrels and Claims of "We, the People " in Constitutional Creation and Ratification


• Part Two: Civic Struggles to Refound "We, the People " and the Constitution


• 4 : Pursuing Equality


• Abolitionists' Anti-slavery Constitutionalism and Reconstruction


• 5 : Claiming Justice


• Suffragists' Gender Justice Constitutionalism and Transformation


• 6 : The Complexities of a Civic Founders' Constitution


• References


• Index

Elizabeth Beaumont is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, where she focuses on democracy, citizenship, and constitutionalism. Previously, she was a Research Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In addition to her work on constitutionalism, she has co-authored books on civic education and political engagement.