| Decades before the U.S. Constitution was ratified, state constitutions began to lay the foundations for this nation's legal system and political institutions. These state constitutions were short in length, general in application, and principled in nature. They followed a constitutive model of constitutionalism, built on the Enlightenment notion of government by reason rather than by force through the "science of government." Some modern state constitutions follow a different model of constitutional design that collapses the distinction between constitutional and statutory provisions. Under this model of "popular constitutionalism," constitutional legislation blends the structure of the regime and rules of governance with the body of law that administers the affairs of the state. State constitutions constructed or amended on this model are much longer, more detailed, and contain numerous provisions that are virtually indistinguishable in form from statutory law. This regulatory model challenges the understanding of American constitutionalism as a two-pronged, hierarchical system of law. The cluttering of state constitutions with regulatory provisions diminishes their status as a distinct and higher level of legal authority and significantly alters their role in the American political system. Constitutional legislation, as a practice, has important implications for schemes of public policy-making in the states, with the potential to limit the popular branches of state government unduly and to foster interest group competition in a previously restricted institutional arena.;This dissertation explores historical changes in state constitutions to explain the blurring of institutional boundaries between state constitutional and statutory law. A comparative analysis of state constitutional development in two states---Oregon and Massachusetts---documents the emergence and growth of regulatory provisions in state constitutions and reveals that the scope and substance of this institutional transformation is not uniform across the nation. The unique blend of institutional structures and political culture within each state facilitated particular patterns of constitutional change. Each case study has two parts, an overview of the state's historical constitutional development and a closer examination of select amendment proposals. Both parts emphasize the actors, strategies, and ideologies behind the incorporation of public policy into state constitutions. |
