The Revolutionary Martyrdom of Jonathan Robbins
Philadelphia's new beginning was unsettled by revolutionary France and counter-revolutionary England; ideological schism brought fear of foreign influence, and innuendo that American government might take on an autocratic or leveling cast. The Revolutionary Martyrdom of Jonathan Robbins capture...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Yale Law Journal Co.
1990
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| In: |
The Yale law journal
Year: 1990, Volume: 100, Issue: 2, Pages: 229-368 |
| RelBib Classification: | XA Law |
| Further subjects: | B
Girard, René (1923-2015)
B Robbins, Jonathan B Martyrdom B Revolution |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Philadelphia's new beginning was unsettled by revolutionary France and counter-revolutionary England; ideological schism brought fear of foreign influence, and innuendo that American government might take on an autocratic or leveling cast. The Revolutionary Martyrdom of Jonathan Robbins captures the instability of the early Constitutional period in a history of the Jonathan Robbins affair-President John Adams' notorious decision to deny American refuge to a sailor accused of mutiny on a British man-of-war. Adams' delivery of Jonathan Robbins to a British hanging left Jeffersonian Republicans free to denounce the autocracy of treaty power and Executive power, and the disregard of legislature and jury, while Federalists decried the mutiny's wanton violence as sign of Jacobin and Republican disorder. The constitutional debate scathed John Adams, with an attempt to impeach or censure him in the House of Representatives, and aided Jefferson's close victory in the election of 1800. The affair of Jonathan Robbins is a foundation stone for the American debate on Executive power in foreign affairs-source of Congressman John Marshall's famous declaration that the President is "the sole organ of the nation in its external relations" (a dictum made additionally famous by United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp.). The author suggests that Congressman Marshall entertained a view of Executive power that owes more to High Federalism and Hamilton than to Marbury, including a theory of "political questions" within treaty interpretation. The legal history of the Robbins affair also bears importantly on the Article III jurisdiction of federal courts, on the decline of the law of nature and nations as a category of legal thought in America, on the decline of treaty power, on the difference between perception and fact in popular politics, and on the power of metaphor in constitutional debate and our continuing difficulty in reconciling a revolutionary past with the rival powers of American government. |
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| Item Description: | Comment(s): References to "Violence and the Sacred"., BN: 100, HN: 2 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The Yale law journal
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/796618 |