Description
Book SynopsisFew Americans understand the Constitution’s workings. Its real importance for the average citizen is as an enduring reminder of the moral vision that shaped the nation's founding. Maxwell Bloomfield looks at the broader appeal that constitutional idealism has always made to the American imagination through publications and films.
Trade ReviewLegal scholars too rarely raise their heads from legal texts, especially Supreme Court reports. When they do, to place the court's opinions 'in context,' they almost always assume that the relevant contexts are political or economic. Bloomfield corrects the lawyers' error by reminding them (and us) that constitutional law also has a cultural context. Not only are court opinions situated in a 'high' intellectual culture of law and elite opinion, which legal scholars participate in and usually take for granted, they also operate in a broader culture of popular ideas. Bloomfield rediscovers and recreates the atmosphere of contemporary popular culture. -- John V. Orth, author of
The North Carolina State ConstitutionAn insightful scholarly study of how ideas and images of constitutional government permeate popular culture...A significant contribution to the history of 20th-century popular and political culture. * Kirkus Reviews *
Table of ContentsPreface 1. The Founders' Constitution and Republican Culture 2. Modern Constitutionalism and Progressive Reform 3. The Selling of War Socialism 4. Constitutional Conservatism in a Decade of Normalcy 5. Symbols of Authority in a Collapsing Economy 6. Imagining a New Constitutional Order 7. Inauguration Day, 1933 Afterword Notes Index
