Adam R. Nelson

Dartmouth College v. Woodward (eBook, ePUB)

Colleges, Corporations, and the Common Good

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Dartmouth College v. Woodward examines the landmark case decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1819 after New Hampshire's state legislature attempted to amend Dartmouth's charter to place the college under greater public control. Adam R. Nelson interprets the case not only as one about higher-education governance or American corporate law in an emerging constitutional order, and not simply as a case about the Marshall Court's preference for private over public initiative as the primary driver of social and commercial development. More fundamentally, Nelson uses the case to illustrate a broad ideological shift from commonwealth republicanism to market liberalism in both education and jurisprudence during the early nineteenth century.

The question at the heart of the case was: should Dartmouth College be subject to legislative authority? This book finds that when the state court said yes but the US Supreme Court said no, the divergence between these decisions stemmed not only from different applications of the contracts clause but also from disagreements about the degree to which core institutions in a democracywhether colleges or churches or companiesshould be overseen or regulated by political majorities. Implicit in the Dartmouth case, though never clarified, was the question of whether higher education was a private or public good, and thus whether colleges are better off under private or public control. By choosing the private path, Dartmouth reinforced a gradual privatization of what might otherwise have been considered public goods. Americans today live with the consequences of this decision.

A landmark in American corporate law, the Dartmouth College case has been cited in a wide variety of subsequent decisions, including Citizens United (2010) and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores (2014). Adam Nelson's informative work provides an accessible introduction to this important piece of American legal history.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: University Press of Kansas
• Seitenzahl: 286
• Erscheinungstermin: 8. April 2025
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780700638697
• Artikelnr.: 75675046

Autorenporträt

Adam R. Nelson is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Educational Policy Studies and History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of several books, including Exchange of Ideas: The Economy of Higher Education in Early America and Capital of Mind: The Idea of a Modern American University.