An introduction to the main themes of the American Constitution—popular sovereignty, separation of powers, federalism, and rights.
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A Constituição dos Estados Unidos
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Bonus Content Archive
This content is not tied to the assessment materials in any way, but it is interesting, entertaining and informative nonetheless. We encourage all learners to take some time to watch these videos and post about them in the discussion forums!
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Akhil Reed AmarSterling Professor of Law and Political Science
Yale Law School
Hi, and welcome to this week's bonus content.
This week we're going to show you a tour of the Beinecke Library,
which is right across from the Yale Law School.
The tour is hosted by Lauren Biksacky,
a teaching assistant from last year's version of this course.
We hope you enjoy the tour.
>> Hello again, everyone.
As you may remember, my name is Lauren Biksacky and
I'm one of your teaching assistants here for the Constitutional Law Coursera class.
I'm a third year student at Yale Law School and I actually am taking
the opportunity today to join a librarian here at Yale Law School, Mike Widener.
Now he is the head librarian for Yale Law School's rare book collection.
And we're here today to look at some of the primary sources as well as secondary
sources related to the Constitution that Yale has in its rare book collection.
Now many of you have expressed comments and
questions about some of these other sources related to the Constitution.
Specifically, you've asked about The Federalist Papers and
some of the state ratifying conventions.
And so we've prepared a set of some books that you might be interested in.
And we hope that you'll take this opportunity to learn more about our
Constitution and maybe even explore a local library yourself.
Now the first book we have here is a debate about one
of the state constitution ratifying conventions.
Can you tell us a little bit about this book?
>> Sure. At first thanks for coming, Laura.
And this is a collection we want people to use,
so you're welcome to come and, and use the collection.
This first example we have here is a,
the first edition of the debates of the ratifying convention in Massachusetts.
The convention took place in 1788.
The book came out in 1788.
So it came out very soon after the convention was over.
And it consists, really, of nothing but newspaper reports.
And the people who publish the book were two newspapers.
So they put the, their, their material together that they had already reported in
the newspapers, compiled it and got it out to the reading public in, in a book form.
And this tells us a couple things about the, the, the the text itself.
Newspaper publishers are pretty good judges of their market.
They have a wide readership, and
they felt probably that this book was going to have a wide readership.
And because of the nature of the ratification process, they were
probably thinking this may even have a market outside of just Massachusetts.
How about the other states that have not yet
taken a vote on ratifying the Constitution?
This is a way for Massachusetts to have an influence on the other states.
So it's, it's interesting in that respect looking at it from a business and
marketing standpoint and what that tells about the process behind it,
the whole ratification process.
>> Now in Professor Amar's lectures,
he really emphasizes that the state ratifying conventions had a lower bar for
people to vote for the ratification of the constitution.
And what that means is more people could vote for
this than they could vote for anything else in the past.
>> Wow. >> And so
I can see why having these printed in the newspapers for the common people that
have never had the opportunity to vote would be really beneficial.
>> Sure, absolutely.
And and again newspapers are great judges of
markets like this because they have to sell to the common people.
So, yeah, it, I think it's a, it's a great point.
Just to show you just a few, I mean, there is extensive debates.
And again these are newspaper sources.
You're never sure how exactly accurate they are, but
they're probably had, had they had practice at these things.
This is one example here of the debate about a federal district.
Meaning, what we now know of as the District of Columbia.
And I know I've been reading this, one of the delegates speculates is this
to protect the legislators, the governors from insult, you know,
from people that are unhappy with what they're doing.
That's why, so anyway this is one one example of some of the debates, and
a lot of the issues that were debated here are of interest even today.
The debates about slavery, how you're going to count votes,
apportionment, all these things.
The judiciary, all these things were, were important at the time.
>> Some of the students actually were interested in debates about slavery and
representation and vote counting, and so they could actually go to either internet
or primary sources at their own libraries and read more about these debates.
>> Absolutely, absolutely and and a lot of them have a lot of
echoes with current events today so, also makes them of interest.
When we come to the back of the book here what you see here is the,
the, the final vote tally.
You have all, the votes of all the delegates, their names, how they voted.
And the, the, kind of the ratifying language.
And you see here, signed in type, you see John Hancock.
The, the proverbial John Hancock appears right there on as the press of.
>> That's his John Hancock.
[LAUGH] >> That's his John Hancock in type.
So you see this.
So this is and this is also kind of important as a public record of sorts.
Not that this was an official record, but
this shows that there was a, an official vote.
That the, the convention went through steps to,
to make their, their decision official.
What's very interesting also is at the very end you have about three,
about two and a half pages.
These are just statements of the people who voted nay,
who said, and they're saying, yes I voted against this.
I, I this was not only my belief, but
the belief of the people who sent me to the convention to represent them.
But they're saying also, but we recognize this is a legitimate process.
That that we abide by it and
we can now count on us to support the constitution from now on out.
So it's, they're ratifying, in essence
the process that they just participated in, even though they voted no.
>> Well, as Professor Amar outlined,
nine of the 13 states needed to ratify this constitution through their
state delegations before it would come into effect.
Now that we've talked a little bit about the state ratifying conventions,
I'd like to show you an early version,
an early copy of the Constitution after it's been ratified.
So next, we have an early copy of a printed version of the Constitution.
Now, it's contained in a really large book.
Mike, can you tell us a little bit about what this book is, and
who might have access to it?
>> Yes, this book is a collection of Connecticut statutes, session logs.
And we can see here this is the the acts of
laws of Connecticut from 1784, all post-independence.
But there's several, there's several volumes.
There's several books bound together into one.
>> And what is at the front of this book?
>> Well, that's what makes this book really interesting.
This little pamphlet at
the beginning is a printing of the Constitution of the United States.
It's undated, but it's a very early printing and
that's acknowledged in a lot of the early bibliographies.
And at the bottom,
this is actually a relic of the ratification process here in Connecticut.
because you see here, the statement at the bottom,
in the name of the people of the State of Connecticut dah, dah, dah,
dah, dah, they ratify it and it's stated Hartford, January 9th, 1788.
So, this probably came out very soon afterwards.
>> And I'd like to point out just one more thing about this before we move on, and
that is the text itself.
The size of the preamble versus the size of
the original text of the constitution, the articles of the constitution.
And as you can see,
the text of the preamble is almost double the size of the articles.
And that really highlights what Professor Amar has highlighted in his
lectures to you.
Which is that we the people of the United States ordain this constitution.
And the preamble highlights the importance of democracy in our system.
Well now we've looked at an early copy of the Constitution, and I'd like to
take a look at one more prized piece of the rare book collection here at Yale.
And that is the Federalist Paper.
Lastly, I have one of the jewels of the Yale Law School's rare book collection.
And that is the first edition of The Federalist.
Mike, what can you tell us about this first edition?
>> Well it's, it's a, it's a great book.
One of the classics of political science in the world.
This The Federalist began also as a collection of newspaper articles.
It's >> So the people had access?
>> That's right, they had access to it.
It's, you could actually think of it,
really, as a piece of political propaganda.
This was a sales job for selling the constitution.
And so it came out in two volumes, but not at the same time.
The first volume collects essays that had already been published in the newspaper.
The second volume, which came out a couple months later has some others that appeared
in the newspaper and some that appear in the book form for the first time.
>> So those weren't available for the people to read at the ratification?
>> yes.
Yeah. Well,
it depends on when the ratification took place.
But they were in circulation.
So, either in book form or as as newspaper.
So it's an extremely important book.
It's a piece of political propaganda.
They're selling the constitution.
They're trying to convince people that this constitution that's been passed is
worthy of ratification.
It's the best way for the nation to go forward.
So they're it's a sales job.
And so, and it's, this book has been enormously influential.
It, people still are arguing over it today.
There's been dozens, and dozens, and dozens of editions of The Federalist.
It's still important in debates and
so forth to this day just as a work of political science.
It's really a, a monument in world literature.
>> So at the time, we didn't know who actually wrote these pieces?
>> Another thing about this particular in the first edition is
we still don't have the author's names appearing here.
We don't know that it's at least at least not in print.
That it's Hamilton and Jay and Madison who were the authors of this, of these essays.
And there's something else.
There's a couple of the special things about our copy of the first edition of
The Federalist that I'd like to show you.
Our copy is still in its original kind of very primitive form.
These are cheap temporary pasteboard covers
that normally would have been replaced.
This is probably how the book looked like when it was purchased from the bookseller.
The, the pages are untrimmed.
For collectors, collectors go ga ga over these books.
Because they are,
they are still you know, as close to original condition as possible.
And that's why we're really happy to have this copy.
The other thing about this copy, it was owned by General Samuel McClellan.
A Connecticut man who was a veteran of the battles of Lexington and Concord and
Bunker Hill.
And one of his descendants donated this book to us in the 1940s.
So we're very, very happy and honored to have this copy.
>> Mike, this was a great opportunity for me and for our students that are watching
online to see some of the jewels of the Yale Law Library, rare book collection.
I'd like to thank you for your time and-
>> It was a pleasure.
Thank you for coming.
>> And sharing this experience with everyone.
>> Sure. >> And I know that I speak for myself and
probably you as well to say that librarians love showing people books.
They love talking about the books.
You know, Mike is just one of many at public libraries as well
as university libraries all around and
I'd encourage all of you to explore some of the resources that your libraries have.
And who knows,
you know, maybe you'll stumble on something that people have overlooked in
the past like the, the size of the text of the preamble or anything else.
And so many great thinkers and
scholars learned from the primary sources and we hope that you explore them as well.
I look forward to seeing you all and
talking to you on the discussion boards and in the future with our bonus footage.
Have a great day.
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