Rossiter, Clinton (1917–1970)

• Author: Richard B. Bernstein
• Pages: 2295

Page 2295

Clinton Lawrence Rossiter III was a political scientist, constitutional scholar, and historian. His fascination with the response of constitutional government to the exigencies of crisis and war led to his first two books, Constitutional Dictatorship (1948) and The Supreme Court and the Commander in Chief (1951). His most widely read work, The American Presidency (1956, rev. ed. 1960), a deft and approving account of the Presidency's growth in power, influence, and responsibility, was perhaps the most influential study of that institution before Watergate. Seedtime of the Republic, a monumental intellectual history of the AMERICAN REVOLUTION, traced the roots of the Revolutionary generation's political ideas to seventeenth-century English republican thought. Rossiter's...