Bullettin n. 1/2011
June 2011
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Matthew S. Brogdon
    Defending the Union: Andrew Jackson's Nullification Proclamation and American Federalism
    in Review of Politics (The) , Volume 73, Issue 02 ,  2011 ,  245-273
    This essay contends that we can better understand Andrew Jackson's distinctive account of federalism by looking outside the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian political traditions. More appropriate peers for Jackson, as a constitutional statesman, are John Marshall and Abraham Lincoln. Existing treatments of Jackson miss these connections because they focus primarily on his roles as party leader and reformer, to the neglect of his constitutional statesmanship. A major cause of this neglect is the apparent inconsistency between Jackson's “nationalist” account of the Union in the Nullification Proclamation and his advocacy of “states' rights” elsewhere, a tension that can be resolved by a closer reading of Jackson's rhetoric. Among other things, this redefinition of Jackson's legacy demonstrates that there is no necessary tension between a strong union and meaningful limits on federal power; nor is there a necessary affinity between narrow construction of federal power and state-compact theory.
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