Missouri Constitutions: History, Theory and Practice William F
College of William & Mary Law School William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository Faculty Publications Faculty and Deans 1958 Missouri Constitutions: History, Theory and Practice William F. Swindler William & Mary Law School Repository Citation Swindler, William F., "Missouri Constitutions: History, Theory and Practice" (1958). Faculty Publications. 1618. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/1618 Copyright c 1958 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs MISSOURI CONSTITUTIONS: ISTORY, THEORY AND PRACTICE (In Two Installments) WILLIAM F. SWINDLER* I. STATE CONSTITUTIONAL LAW IN GENERAL Among the many unwritten chapters in American legal history, the theory and practice of state constitutional law make up a large segment. That the state constitutions adopted since 1787 have been influenced both in form and substance by the Federal Constitution is generally accepted; and the degree of influence upon the federal instrument by pre-1787 state documents has also been the subject of some study.1 But the precise nature of state constitutions, the local needs they were designed to satisfy as distinguished from the needs of a national govern- ment, the significance in their generally greater length and variegation, the similarities and divergences in development in different states- not to mention the practical need of the average attorney for a working knowledge of state, as distinguished from national, constitutional proce- dure-are all fundamental questions for which the answers await addi- tional research to supplement what little has been done to date.2 Mean- *Professor of Journalism, University of Nebraska; A.B., B.S., Washington Uni- versity, 1935; MA., University of Missouri, 1936, Ph.D., 1942; Studied law, University of Missouri and University of Nebraska, 1955 to the present time.
[Show full text]