Wallis on Dinan, _The American State Constitutional Tradition_

[eh.net-review at eh.net]

Published by EH.NET (May 2008)

John J. Dinan, _The American State Constitutional Tradition_. 
Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2006. ix + 430 pp. $35 
(cloth), ISBN: 0-7006-1435-4.

Reviewed for EH.NET by John J. Wallis, Department of Economics, 
University of Maryland.


As I get older and learn more American history, the stronger my 
suspicion grows that the traditional approach to our history is 
seriously flawed. John Dinan's book on state constitutional 
conventions raises those suspicions even higher. Our monomaniacal 
emphasis on the national government, the national constitution, and 
the time line of national events introduces a bias into our view of 
what happened in history, as well as into our interpretation of why 
what happened, happened.

Our focus on national history causes the most basic problems for 
economic historians. Twice in the twentieth century economic 
historians went back to the founding era and early nineteenth century 
to see if the United States was really a laissez-faire society 
(Callender, 1902; Cole, 1970). Both times they returned a unanimous 
verdict: early America wasn't a laissez-faire society. State and 
local governments actively and consciously tried to promote economic 
and social development throughout the century. Questions about 
American government's role in promoting or retarding economic 
development in the nineteenth century can only be adequately answered 
by focusing our attention on state and local governments. Conclusions 
about government's role in American growth based primarily on the 
national government will simply be (and are) wrong.

The problem is even more acute for constitutional historians. When 
the second national constitution was written at Philadelphia in 1787, 
there were already thirteen state constitutions in effect. Since then 
states have written another 135 or so constitutions (depending on how 
they are counted), amending them over 10,000 times. State 
constitutions govern the chartering of corporations, the provision of 
education, investment in infrastructure and finance, and the civil 
rights and freedoms of individuals. Despite this plethora of 
constitutional activity, American scholars continue to write of the 
American constitutional tradition as the history of one, short, 
rarely-amended national constitution.

John Dinan's book on _The American State Constitutional Tradition_ is 
a good place to start revising our histories. Dinan's book is not a 
full blown history of state constitutions, but an examination of 
several key constitutional issues and their treatment in the 233 
state constitutional conventions from the eighteenth century to the 
present. Dinan located extant records of the debates for 114 
conventions.

After an introduction to state constitutional history and 
constitutional conventions in particular, Dinan considers six areas 
of constitutional authority and structure: amendment and revision, 
representation, separation of powers, bicameralism, rights, and 
citizen character. In each of these areas the federal constitution 
established arrangements in 1787 and the first ten amendments in 1791 
that have gone largely unchanged. Slavery was ended and black civil 
and voting rights assured in the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. The 
14th amendment carried greater implications for the behavior of 
states and is the major federal change with respect to rights in 
general and, by altering the relationship of the federal to state 
governments with respect to rights, it is the largest single 
constitutional alteration since 1791. Representation was changed by 
the 17th amendment, direct election of senators. Suffrage was changed 
by the 19th amendment (women), 23rd (residents of the District of 
Columbia), and 26th (18 to 20 year olds). The other amendments are 
primarily technical, although many will argue with the income tax 
amendment as a technicality.

In contrast, states have written an average of three complete 
constitutions in their history, the leader is Louisiana with twelve. 
State constitutions have been amended roughly 10,000 times. All of 
the areas Dinan emphasizes have seen substantial changes, with the 
exception of bicameralism which has proven to be a durable form, 
although the structure of bicameralism has been subjected to some 
modification over time as well.

There is no definitive history of state constitutions and Dinan's 
prodigious research into just six areas of constitutional structure 
shows why. His primary sources are the published debates of the state 
constitutional conventions. His source notes occupy 115 pages and 
make up over a quarter of the book's text! G. Alan Tarr's 
_Understanding State Constitutions_ is a good introduction to the 
history, but no one has managed to master even a small amount of the 
material in the state constitutions.

And yet, if we are to understand the development of the American 
economy, polity, and society, it is imperative that we understand 
state constitutions. As Dinan persuasively argues, the federal 
government has been almost silent with respect to issues about 
citizen character, including education, while the states have been 
quite willing to undertake constitutional and legislative initiatives 
to change and, hopefully, improve the quality of their citizens 
through a number of methods. How can we understand how governments 
affect people's lives and the larger aggregate patterns of behavior 
that make up politics and economies if we only look at the level of 
government that rarely tries to affect people's morals and character?

I draw two major lessons from Dinan's excellent treatment of these 
six issues. First, things constantly change in American history. 
Government structure and governance institutions cannot, in any 
remotely reasonable way, be regarded as fixed over time. By embedding 
basic concepts about government structure and the reach of government 
authority into people's lives in their constitutions, rather than 
only in legislation, states have attempted to provide these 
institutional rules with as much stability as possible, despite the 
continual process of change in the institutional rules themselves. 
Second, the constitutional history of the United States cannot be 
accurately written if it is based primarily on our experience with 
the federal constitution. The text of the federal constitution 
changes glacially, perhaps as Dinan suggests, because it is so 
difficult to amend. Credible commitment to political institutions 
does not mean unchanging institutions. There is a much richer 
laboratory of institutional experience and change available to social 
scientists in the American historical record. We should learn about 
it and exploit it.

References:
Guy Stevens Callender, "The Early Transportation and Banking 
Enterprises of the States." _Quarterly Journal of Economics_ 17 (1), 
1902.

Arthur H. Cole, "The Committee on Research in Economic History: An 
Historical Sketch." _Journal of Economic History_ 20 (4), 1970: 
723-41.

G. Alan Tarr, _Understanding State Constitutions_, Princeton: 
Princeton University Press, 1998.


John Joseph Wallis is Professor of Economics at the University of 
Maryland and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic 
Research. He is currently a visiting Professor of Economics at 
Harvard University. Recent publications include "Constitutions, 
Corporations, and Corruption: American States and Constitutional 
Change, 1842 to 1852," _Journal of Economic History_ (2005) and "The 
Concept of Systematic Corruption in American Economic and Political 
History," in Edward Glaeser and Claudia Goldin, editors, _Corruption 
and Reform_ (University of Chicago Press, 2006). He is finishing a 
book with Douglass North and Barry Weingast, _Violence and Social 
Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human 
History_, to be published by Cambridge University Press. 
wallis at econ.umd.edu.

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