A Course of Lectures on the Constitutional Jurisprudence of the United States: Delivered Annually in Columbia College, New York

Duer, William Alexander. A Course of Lectures on the Constitutional Jurisprudence of the United States; Delivered Annually in Columbia College, New York. The Second Edition, Revised, Enlarged, and Adapted to Professional as well as General Use. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1856. xxiv, 545 pp. Reprinted 2000 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 99-16385. ISBN 1-58477-020-1. Cloth. $95. * Duer [1780-1858], a judge of the New York Supreme Court who served as president of Columbia College from 1829 until his retirement in 1842, presented this course of lectures to seniors at Columbia after his retirement. Originally written as The Outlines of the Constitutional Jurisprudence of the United States and proposed as a textbook to prominent universities, the work gained the attention of James Madison and John Marshall, among others. The work was published under the title Lectures on Constitutional Jurisprudence in 1843, and revised in 1856, this the final authorial edition. "Herein Duer still finds ultimate sovereignty in the people. His statement is that if the people of the United States had never before acquired a common character, they assumed it when they ratified the Constitution in conventions." See Bauer, Commentaries on the Constitution 227, Dictionary of American Biography III:488.