Laying the Foundation for a Market Economy

Laying the Foundation for a Market Economy

Description

The political separation pursued by the American founding was sharp and violent. But the transition to an independent American legal order was far less so. Note, for instance, the continuity between two systems in Article XXV of the 1777 New York Constitution: And this convention doth further, in the name and by the authority of the good people of this State, ordain, determine, and declare that such parts of the common law of England, and of the statute law of England and Great Britain, and of the acts of the legislature of the colony of New York, as together did form the law of the said colony on [April 19, 1777] shall be and continue the law of this State, subject to such alterations and provisions as the legislature of this State shall, from time to time, make concerning the same. Nor was this the only way in which the new regime derived from the old. The American constitutional system ultimately contained many features that were partial departures from the English model (like having a president and not a king). But much of its federal system was an adaptation that put the federal government in the place of the English government and left most of the governing to the states, deploying only (what seemed at the time) enumerated powers to define the federal government’s role. This relatively smooth doctrinal transition makes it possible to examine the American system in light of the English one. Unsurprisingly, many of the tensions evident in legal debates in Great Britain, which was in the midst of its first industrial revolution, carried over to the United States. This was especially true with what we would now call economic policy.

First Page

81

Source Publication

Capitalism and the American Revolution

Source Editors/Authors

Yuval Levin, Adam J. White, John Yoo

Publication Date

3-11-2025

Publisher

AEI Press

Laying the Foundation for a Market Economy

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