Robert L. Tsai

A fascinating look at the obscure American tradition of revolutionary or separatist groups writing formal constitutions to lay out their vision for the world. Covering everything from land squatters to utopian socialists, from white nationalists to black nationalists, from Confederates to abolitionists, from Native Americans to one-worlders, Tsai lays out the historical context that drove these groups to lay out their vision of governance, and then analyzes the particular details — how legislative and executive power were balanced, how economic and social life were governed, how they related to the powers that be, and so on.

Other than the Confederate Constitution, and to a certain degree the Sequoyah Constitution (which formed the basis of the Oklahoma Constitution), none of these documents were ever put into effect, and certainly none to the degree that the U.S. Constitution was. So this is not so much an analysis of what was, or even almost was, so much as what people thought should have been. Most of these groups were pretty marginalized in their time. But it's a perspective-twister to look at these remixes of the U.S. Constitution we all know, to look at how smart, passionate (and often slightly crazy or malevolent) people of bygone days tried to "fix" that document's apparent flaws.… (mais)