THE COMPLETE BILL OF RIGHTS: THE DRAFTS, DEBATES, SOURCES & ORIGINS by Neil H. Cogan.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 708 pp. Cloth $95.00. ISBN 0-19-510322-X.

Reviewed by Donald W. Jackson, Department of Political Science, Texas Christian University.
 

How should a reference work be reviewed? Several of the customary standards for reviewing a monograph (the identification of the book's thesis, the methodology employed by the author, the review and evaluation of the book's findings and conclusions, the contribution of the book to a body of substantive literature) do not apply. Instead, it seems reasonable to specify the purpose of a reference book, its organization and its breadth. Then a reviewer ought to consider what this reference work offers relative to comparable sources.

Neil Cogan is quite clear about his purpose and the breadth of his book: "THIS BOOK'S AIM IS TO PROVIDE THE MOST COMPLETE, ACCURATE, and accessible set of texts available for interpreting the Bill of Rights. . . ." The organizing feature of the book is to devote a chapter to each clause of the Bill of Rights, except for the provisions for criminal due process, which are grouped together in Chapter 12. For example, Chapter 1 begins with the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses. All of the drafts and proposals relative to those clauses are in the first section of the chapter; any contemporaneous discussion of these drafts and proposals is contained in the second section; and any antecedent or contemporaneous discussion of the rights to be protected by the clauses is gathered in the third section. The references within each section are arranged chronologically. This structure, coupled with the chronology, is especially important in the first section of each chapter. There one can see the evolution of the precise wording of a provision, such as the Establishment Clause, with the source of each change being clearly identified. It took an enormous amount of work to bring these proposals together within this structure. That work having been well done once saves incalculable time (consisting mostly of tedious effort) for other scholars. We should be grateful.

Dean Cogan includes in his preface a brief section on the importance of "originalism." He suggests the vagaries of meanings of that term, but argues (quite reasonably I think) that whatever importance one may attribute to original intent, having a complete, accurate and accessible texts of the words in question is helpful to all. He says that otherwise, "there is no place where one can read all the drafts of the provisions of the Bill of Rights. One must piece the drafts together from journals, newspaper reports, and manuscripts." That brings us to the question of comparable sources.

Of course there are plenty of accounts of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, all of them equally constrained by the notes and journals of the participants and witnesses. One account (Prescott, 1968) rearranged Madison's notes to facilitate consideration of the consecutive development of provisions of the original Constitution, somewhat like Cogan's efforts with the Bill of Rights. But, of course, none of the accounts of the Constitutional Convention treat the Bill of Rights.

Cogan's principal competitor as a reference work on the Bill of Rights is the work of Bernard Schwartz. Schwartz's first version was THE BILL OF RIGHTS: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY (1971) and his second was THE ROOTS OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS (1980). The second edition essentially is a popular edition of the first, with illustrations added. Cogan is quite right; his book makes the evolution of the text of provisions of the Bill of Rights much more accessible than other reference books. While Schwartz presents his sources chronologically, he offers them in their own context, (e.g., a day's entry from the ANNALS OF CONGRESS, which may cover a number of clauses) rather than using a particular clause of the Bill of Rights as the organizing principle. Cogan's presentation is much better.

What Schwartz does, while Cogan does not, is to offer, in their entirety, various possible antecedents for the Bill of Rights, back to 1215 and Magna Carta on the English side, and to the First Charter of Virginia (1606) on the American side of the Atlantic. There are, of course, many other sources for such antecedents, one of the notable ones being the Perry and Cooper (1972) compilation for the American Bar Foundation, SOURCES OF OUR LIBERTIES which also begins with Magna Carta. What Cogan does, while Schwartz and the Perry and Cooper compilation do not, is to extract from antecedents particular words as they relate to the evolution of a particular clause of the Bill of Rights. For example, in the context of the Establishment Clause, Cogan quotes from the Mayflower Compact of 1620 the avowed purpose of the colonists to undertake for the "glory of God, and the advancement of the christian faith," the establishment of a colony in Virginia, while Schwartz does not include the Mayflower Compact among his antecedents. Schwartz gives us the entirety of the English Bill of Rights of 1689, while Cogan relates specific provisions from that document to a related provisions of the U.S. Bill of Rights.

For those for whom "originalism" may be important, or indeed for those who doubt its relevance, Cogan's book offers the common ground of an accurate and accessible source. Every reference library should have a copy.
 

Perry, Richard L. and John C. Cooper (eds.). 1972 [c.1959] SOURCES OF OUR LIBERTIES. New York: New York University Press.

Prescott, Arthur T. 1968 [c1941]. DRAFTING THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. New York: Greenwood Press.

Schwartz, Bernard. 1971. THE BILL OF RIGHTS: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY. (2 vols.). New York: Chelsea House.

__________. 1980. THE ROOTS OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS (5 vols.). New York: Chelsea House.