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The Kentucky State Constitution A Reference Guide
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Robert M. Ireland
Foreword by Robert F. Stephens
Book Code: GR0002
ISBN: 0-313-30002-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-30002-8
288 pages
Greenwood Press
Publication: 6/30/1999
List Price: $125.00 (UK Sterling Price: £70.00)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Ebook
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • This will be an extremely valuable resource to Kentucky historians, legal and constitution scholars, appellate judges, and political scientists who have an interest in Kentucky government. His observations and analyses are succinct, clear, and accurate. His explanations about how the late-nine-teenth-century historical context affected the writers are invaluable to the understanding of many constitutional provisions....The author does an excellent job of explaining this long, curious, and often frustrating document in historical context....I am confident that other readers will find it to be a most valuable reference source.
    —Register Of The Kentucky Historical Society
  • Robert M. Ireland has produced an important, interesting, and useful reference guide to the commonwealth's constitution....This reference guide to Kentucky's constitution ought to find a place in every legislative research library and graduate research library as well as in every law school library in the commonwealth.
    —The Filson History Quarterly
Description: A summary of the history of the commonwealth's constitution-making and a section-by-section analysis of the current constitution of the State of Kentucky. Discussion of the history and purpose of each section, together with leading judicial interpretations, enables readers to understand a document that has become the source of rights not found in the federal constitution. Kentuckians have written four constitutions since statehood commenced in 1792. Drafters of the first charter borrowed heavily from the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1790, but the writers of subsequent documents drew substantially from the experiences of state government. The delegates to the convention which wrote the current Constitution especially responded to perceived deficiencies of the legislature, which was regarded as incapable or unwilling to remedy some of the most serious problems facing the commonwealth. For that reason the drafters inserted in the charter specific legislative mandates and prohibitions in a detail that more resembled a statutory code than a constitution. This specificity might have undermined the utility of the constitution in a modern society had not the framers also provided an amendment process that has allowed essential streamlining and modernizing. Ironically, the oldest part of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, has been the source of some of the boldest judicial interpretations that have fashioned rights not recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in the federal Constitution.
Table of Contents:
  • Series Foreword by G. Alan Tarr
  • Foreword
  • The Constitutional History of Kentucky
  • The Kentucky Constitution and Commentary
  • Bibliographical Essay
  • Tables of Cases
  • Index
LC Card Number: 98-51635
LCC Class: KFK1601
Dewey Class: 342
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