"To Save the People from Themselves"

Robert J. Steinfeld is Professor of Law Emeritus at the SUNY Buffalo School of Law. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, and at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley.

A far-reaching re-interpretation of the origins of American judicial review.

Introduction. Part I. Legislatures and Legislation under the First American Constitutions: 1. The largely 'legislative' character of the ('Horizontal' and 'Vertical') constitutional checks placed on colonial legislatures; 2. The traditional nature of the first written constitutions and the role of legislatures as their primary expounders; 3. Restoring 'legislative' review of the laws: the New York Constitution of 1777; Part II. The Emergence Of American Judicial Review: 1779-1787: I. 1779-1782; 4. Supplementing traditional legislative 'revision' with judicial review: the New Jersey case of Holmes V. Walton, 1779-1780; 5. The debate over judicial review in the Virginia court of appeals: the case of the prisoners, 1782; II. 1784-1787: 6. The reappearance of 'vertical' judicial review in the case of Rutgers v. Waddington, New York, 1784; 7. The successful battle to establish judicial review in New Hampshire: the ten pound act cases, 1786-87, and their aftermath; 8. Judicial review and legislative supremacy in Rhode Island: the case of Trevett v. Weeden, 1786, and its aftermath; 9. The struggle between traditional constitutionalism and the constitution of judicial review in North Carolina: the case of Bayard v. Singleton, 1786-87, and its aftermath; Part III. Judicial Review at the Federal Convention: 10. Judicial review and the fate of traditional constitutionalism at the federal convention.