Mcilwain, Charles H. (1871–1968)

• Author: Dennis J. Mahoney
• Pages: 1708-1709

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Charles Howard McIlwain, a lawyer and political scientist, taught at Princeton and Harvard Universities. His major

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fields of interest were political theory and British constitutional history. His The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation won the Pulitizer Prize in 1923. In that book he showed that the revolution was "the outcome of a collision between two mutually incompatible interpretations of the British constitution." His Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern (1940, revised 1947) argued that the essence of CONSTITUTIONALISM was the balance between governmental power and the JURISDICTION of an independent judiciary and traced the roots of American constitutionalism through...