Book Review:

Paul W. Finkelman, The First American Constitutions:  State and Federal (reviewing Willi Paul Adams’ The First American Constitutions:  Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era and William Winslow Crosskey & William Jeffrey Jr.’s Politics and the Constitution in the History of the United States), 59 Texas L. Rev. 1141 (1981).

Abstract:

The two books reviewed here examining the critical phase from the drafting of the first state constitutions in early 1776 to the ratification of the federal constitution in 1788.  Crosskey and Jefrey’s book focuses on the power of the national government under the Constitution of 1787.  They focus on the eighteenth century understanding of the commerce clause and conclude that “commerce” at that time meant all useful economic activity and that the power to regulate commerce among the states was a national rather than interstate power.  Adams writes about the formation of state constitutions and challenges the idea that the Constitution was meant to give plenary power to the national government.