We the People

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Taking the Constitution Seriously

   • Donald C. Dahlin

   Pages 1-12

3. Who Interprets?

   • Donald C. Dahlin

   Pages 13-29

4. How to Interpret?

   • Donald C. Dahlin

   Pages 31-56

5. Top Ten Supreme Court Decisions

   • Donald C. Dahlin

   Pages 57-142

6. Taking Stock

   • Donald C. Dahlin

   Pages 143-150

7. Back Matter

   Pages 151-186

   PDF

Dahlin takes an analytical approach to existing Constitutional scholarship and presents a limited number of landmark Supreme Court decisions in a way that makes this important material accessible to an undergraduate academic audience.

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"Starting from the premise that the United States Constitution is our constitution, Donald Dahlin poses a series of thought-provoking and timely questions about what the carefully chosen words of the Constitution mean, how the words are interpreted, and who should interpret them. Dahlin's questions are on point and his analyses are elegantly accessible. His book's great contribution is to make our founding document understandable to those who are not lawyers and academics and to give readers the confidence to discuss contemporary constitutional issues intelligently." - Michael A. Wolff, professor of law, Saint Louis University; former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri.

"We the People is an excellent supplemental text for undergraduate classes in American politics, including the intro course. It engages the student through posing questions for the student to answer and the providing the author's logic. The text is balanced and informed." - Kenneth J. Meier, Charles H. Gregory Chair in Liberal Arts, Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University

DONALD C. DAHLIN is Professor of Political Science and Vice President for Academic Affairs Emeritus at the University of South Dakota, USA. Currently a member of the American Bar Association's Standards Review Committee fellow of the Institute for Court Management, Dr. Dahlin has also served as Management Analyst in the United States Department of Justice, Secretary of the South Dakota Department of Public Safety, Acting President of the University of South Dakota, Vice-chair of the South Dakota Constitutional Revision Commission, and a member of the five-person Commission on the Advancement of Federal Law Enforcement. Most of his published research has focused on the work of state courts, including his monograph, Models of Court Management.

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