Vol. 12 No. 11 (November 2002)

The U.S. Constitution A to Z by Robert Maddex. Washington: CQ Press, 2002.  660 pp.  Hardbound $125.00.  ISBN 1-56802-699-4.

Reviewed by Phil Kronebusch, Department of Political Science, St. John’s University, Collegeville, MN.

The aim of the author of THE CONSTITUTION OF THE U.S. A TO Z is to provide a single volume reference book on the Constitution’s history and major concepts, aimed at undergraduates, political activists and researchers.  Published by CQ Press, it is one of several volumes that have been published recently that now compose the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT.  The author of this volume, Robert Maddex, an attorney, has published other works on state constitutions and constitutions of other countries, also for CQ Press.

The organization of the book emphasizes several constitutional themes, with entries on  equal protection, due process, sovereignty and juries.  The book also includes entries on general political topics like poverty, education, the environment, families, the Internet, and terrorism. The entry on the environment, for example, points out that while this is an important issue in public policy, the U.S. Constitution says nothing directly about it.  The entry then explains the constitutional sources of power that Congress has relied upon in passing environmental legislation.

This organizational structure works best for a reader who is interested in a political topic and is seeking information on which particular constitutional clauses and Supreme Court cases are relevant to that topic.  The approach, then, is quite different from a standard reference work like Corwin and Peltason’s UNDERSTANDING THE CONSTITUTION (2000), which is most useful if the reader already knows which constitutional clauses to examine.  While there are numerous references to the Constitutional Convention and to the writings of Madison, Hamilton and Jefferson, the emphasis is not on the founding period.  Rather, the major theme of the book is the U.S. Constitution, as it has come to be understood by the Supreme Court.

A few dozen Supreme Court cases have their own separate entries.  Most of these are cases that are widely recognized as major, historic cases, including MARBURY v. MADISON, BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, and ROE v. WADE.  There are a few cases that lack separate entries, but are more important than some that do have them.  SCOTT v. SANFORD and LOCHNER v NEW YORK lack separate entries, while KATZ v. U.S and FLETCHER v. PECK have entries.

The selection criteria for those justices who merit separate entries are also obscure.  Certainly, John Marshall merits an entry here, but he is joined only by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Thurgood Marshall, and Sandra Day O’Connor.  While not every justice can be profiled in a reference book on the U.S. Constitution, the absence of entries for Louis Brandeis, Earl Warren and Warren Burger is a serious omission.

With over 200 entries on topics as diverse as titles of nobility and prohibition, this is an impressive work that will be most useful to undergraduates as they begin researching major issues in constitutional law.  A noteworthy strength is the frequent comparisons made between the U.S. Constitution and the constitutions of other countries.  For example, the reader learns that, while the U.S. Constitution does not mention the environment, the constitutions of Thailand and Albania do.  However, this strength is limited because the author does not take the next step of offering some analysis of what difference it makes whether or not a country’s constitution makes a direct reference to the environment.

The volume includes numerous illustrations and several useful tables.  One table summarizes all Independent Counsel investigations conducted under the 1978 Ethics in Government Act.  Another lists the six proposed constitutional amendments that were passed by both houses of Congress, but failed to be ratified by a sufficient number of states.  The volume concludes with a set of historical documents, including the texts of the First Charter of Virginia, the Articles of Confederation, the Virginia Plan, and the New Jersey Plan.

Any reference work, to be useful, must simplify and leave to other works the development of important complexities.  Still, a reference work needs to get the details right.  While there is a great deal of value in this volume, it is also marred by a number of errors.  Some simple mistakes should have been caught in the pre-publication review process.  The entry on Prohibition makes a reference to the Nineteenth Amendment when it means the Eighteenth.  And BARRON v. CITY OF BALTIMORE is said to be over whether the Fourth Amendment applies to the states, when the case was about the application of the Takings Clause of the Fifth.

The short summaries of Supreme Court cases also contain mistakes.  A few examples are illustrative.  GOLDWATER v CARTER is described as “deciding that the president had authority to terminate a 1954 mutual defense treaty with Taiwan,” (p. 482) when the Supreme Court avoided deciding the case on the merits and dismissed the suit as either not ripe or raising a nonjusticiable political question.  LOCHNER v. NEW YORK is described as testing “regulations setting minimum wages and governing the maximum number of hours” (p. 291) of labor, when the law at issue only regulated maximum hours.  REED v. REED is summarized as involving a state law “requiring probate courts to select only men to be administrators of estates,” (p. 433) when the law in question established a preference of men to women. 

In addition, some entries leave out information that is important even in a short encyclopedia entry.  For example, in the entry for slavery, the Three-Fifths Compromise and the constitutional clause prohibiting Congress from banning slavery before 1808 are discussed, but there is no mention of the Article IV requirement that states must support the capture and return of escaped slaves.

Perhaps a future edition will address these problems.  For now, THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES (Hall, 1992) is a better single volume reference work that covers the U.S. Constitution.

REFERENCES:

Hall, Kermit (ed.). 1992.  THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Peltason, J.W. and Sue Davis. 2000.  UNDERSTANDING THE CONSTITUTION. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace.

CASE REFERENCES

BARRON v. CITY OF BALTIMORE, 32 US 243 (1833).

BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, 347 US 483 (1954).

FLETCHER v. PECK, 10 US 87 (1810).

GOLDWATER v CARTER, 444 US 996 (1979).

KATZ v. U.S, 386 US 954 (1967).

LOCHNER v NEW YORK, 198 US 45 (1905).

MARBURY v. MADISON, 5 US 137 (1803).

REED v. REED, 404 US 71 (1971).

ROE v. WADE, 410 US 113 (1973).

SCOTT v. SANFORD, 60 US 393 (1856).

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Copyright 2002 by the author, Phil Kronebusch.