Our Secret Constitution: How Lincoln Redefined American Democracy
George P. Fletcher
Abstract
This book asserts that the Civil War marks the end of one era of American legal history, and the beginning of another. Abraham Lincoln's famous Gettysberg Address is viewed as the beginning of a new kind of “covert” constitutional law – one with a stronger emphasis on equality in the wake of the abolition of slavery – which was legally established in the Amendments made to the U.S. Constitution between 1865 and 1870. The author asserts that the influence of this “secret constitution”, which has varied in degree from Reconstruction to the present day, is visible in the rulings of the Supreme Co ... More
Keywords: Civil War, constitutional law, equality, Gettysburg Address, legal history, Abraham Lincoln, Reconstruction, slavery, Supreme Court, U.S. Constitution
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2003 | Print ISBN-13: 9780195156287 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 | DOI:10.1093/0195156285.001.0001 |
