The U.S. Constitution was originally about 4,600 words. But in a lecture on the document's origins Thursday afternoon in Salomon 101, Professor of History Gordon Wood needed just one to sum up the political system it created - "bizarre."
Wood highlighted several peculiarities of the American system, including that two years ago, a state was able to recall its governor by popular vote and replace him with a former action movie star and male model. Sometimes voters even get to enact laws themselves through referendums.
This remarkable amount of popular control is a direct result of the changes the Framers made to the English system they inherited, according to Wood.
The origins of the Constitution laid the "foundations of why we care to believe things the way we do," Wood said.
The Framers saw themselves as Englishmen, Wood said, and had hundreds of years of tradition to serve as a basis for a written charter. In writing the Constitution, the Framers saw themselves as continuing a long tradition that had since become corrupt in England. Throughout the lecture, Wood concentrated on the differences between the American and English systems.
In 18th-century England, the term "constitution" referred to both how the government was put together and any law the legislature passed. Documents such as the English Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta were statutes with the same legal importance as bills to build turnpikes. The words "constitutional" and "legal" were synonymous, Wood said.
Different states unsuccessfully attempted to separate the organization of government and its operation until Massachusetts, in 1780, came up with the idea of convening a constitutional convention independent from the legislature, Wood said. The convention allowed the people to have direct power over the formation of their government.
Also, by holding a convention and writing a constitution, the states created a written document more powerful than any ordinary law. A written constitution is common today but was very unusual during the 18th century - and this, Wood said, is one of the most important American contributions to constitutionalism.
Wood mentioned the current constitutional efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq as examples of the current trend toward written constitutions.
The representation of the popular will in government is one of the key features of the American system, Wood said. In the late 1700s England had a system of "virtual representation" in which every member of Parliament represented the interests of every English citizen. The boundaries of districts were based on history rather than population, leaving some large cities without any representation. The representatives did not have to inhabit their constituency to represent it, Wood said.
The Framers challenged this system with "actual representation," where each district has a number of representatives proportional to its population. Voting, which is less central in the virtual representation system, is integral to actual representation.
"Representatives must be for the people and of the people" in the American system, Wood said.
At the time, another unique feature of the American system was judicial review. But today, some European countries employ judicial review to strike down laws more often than the U.S. Supreme Court does, Wood said. The power began to take shape when state judges started to put restraints on the legislatures, culminating in the 1803 decision Marbury v. Madison, which has since allowed courts to act as agents of the people and interpret the Constitution.
Wood began by noting that "constitutional history is just not fashionable anymore." Many universities have no undergraduate constitutional history classes, though Brown is an exception, he said.
Provost Robert Zimmer introduced Wood before the lecture, the first in a new series celebrating Constitution Day, Sept. 17. Zimmer described Wood as the "natural inaugural leader" for the series, and listed his many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize he won for his book, "The Radicalism of the American Revolution."
Zimmer also noted that all universities receiving federal aid are now required by a 2005 federal law to offer an educational presentation on the Constitution every year on or around Sept. 17.
