GET THE FORMULA RIGHT AND THE REST FOLLOWS:

Having beaten the French in the Seven Years' War and in need of funds to defend its new North American territories, Britain taxed the colonists, which in turn set in motion a rethinking of the relationship to the motherland on the part of Americans. Initially, Americans focused on the concept of representation. If they were to be taxed, only governmental entities in which they had "actual representation"--their provincial legislatures--would do. But soon the squabbles over representation morphed into debates over the concept of sovereignty itself. Wood expertly traces the colonists' growing rejection of parliamentary authority. "The debate had begun with the issue of representation and taxes," but as it shifted to the more fundamental question of where sovereignty lies, "the struggle to answer this question ultimately destroyed the empire."

With their revolution won, Americans broke from Britain and world history yet again as they penned written state constitutions for themselves. Although we were not the first to come up with written constitutions, Americans "did something new and different. They made written constitutions a practical and everyday part of governmental life. They showed the world how written constitutions could be made truly fundamental and distinguishable from ordinary legislation." These state constitutions--with their bicameral legislatures, single-person executives, and independent judiciaries--would serve as models for the 1787 federal Constitution.

Wood maintains that the "imbecility" of the Articles of Confederation, as well as elites' frustration at the chaotic and pro-debtor legislation that was passed by "middling men" in the states, spurred the creation of the Constitution. In debates at the Philadelphia convention and then in the state-ratifying conventions, the sovereignty question arose yet again: Wasn't the notion of two sovereigns (state and national) an absurdity?

Federalists, James Wilson especially, ushered in an ideological innovation to answer this vexing question posed by Anti-Federalists. Federalists contended that "the people retained ultimate sovereignty and doled out bits and pieces of their sovereign power to their different representatives and agents at both the state and national levels." This concept of popular sovereignty--that the people were the source of all power and thus sat atop the legislatures--further buttressed the concept of constitutionalism. There would have to be a supreme, "fundamental law," that bound legislators and was unalterable by normal statute. Thus, along with "the transformation of this written fundamental law into the kind of law that could be expounded and construed in the ordinary court system," popular sovereignty helped usher in the rise of robust judicial review.

Wood therefore unearths three major American innovations: popular sovereignty, written constitutionalism, and judicial review. To top it off, he adds that Americans demarcated the public and private spheres: Public offices would have to be earned, no longer passed down from fathers to sons.

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