It is certainly possible to describe this book as a constitutional history of New York. It follows constitutional developments in New York from the colony's founding in the seventeenth century as a proprietary (later royal) colony, through the periodic constitutional disputes that erupted between British imperial agents and New Yorkers during the eighteenth century, to the drafting of New York's first state constitution during the Revolution and the intense debates that arose within the state over ratification of the U.S. Constitution a decade later, and ends with an account of the vigorous constitutional life New Yorkers continued to lead during the 1820s, twice amending their constitution during that single decade. It is possible to describe Hulsebosch's book this way, but it would be doing it a disservice. This is not a conventional state constitutional history. Hulsebosch draws on a number of important developments in recent historical writing to situate New York's constitutional history within a wider framework and to explore, in this way, a number of large subjects.

Two developments in the historical literature seem to play especially important roles in Hulsebosch's account. The first is an ever-expanding body of recent work that treats American colonial history as an inseparable aspect of Atlantic history; the second is John Phillip Reid's work on eighteenth-century British constitutionalism. These lead Hulsebosch to present two intertwined narratives, each of which sheds new light on the evolution of American constitutionalism.

As for the first strand, Hulsebosch shows that while Americans definitively rejected their colonial status within the British empire during the Revolution, many of them did not completely reject the imperial constitution. On the contrary, after the Revolution, in both New York and later in the nation at large, some Americans sought to recreate in their domestic constitutions certain key features of the British imperial constitution. In his early chapters, Hulsebosch describes the contested constitutional position that New Yorkers occupied within the British empire during the eighteenth century. But in one respect, New Yorkers acquiesced in the orthodox imperial constitution. They resigned themselves, for the most part, to the existence of certain British imperial institutions that imposed strong checks on the powers of their popularly elected colonial assemblies. New York's founding charter, as well as the charters of other colonies, mandated that no legislation should be adopted that was “repugnant” to English law. In New York, the royal governor exercised an absolute veto over legislation passed by the provincial assembly. And beyond the governor lay the Privy Council in England. “At the end of each term [of the assembly], usually twice a year, new laws were sent to London for review by the Board of Trade. Based on the board's report, the Privy Council approved or disallowed the statutes” (55).

When a New York constitutional convention met, in the midst of war and revolution, to write the first state constitution in 1777, it produced a conservative document that featured a strong governor, elected by the people to serve for what at the time was the long term of three years, and high court judges who, once appointed, held office during good behavior. Among the more interesting institutions the convention created was a Council of Revision, which was to consist of the governor, the chancellor, and the judges of the supreme court and was to possess a veto over legislation passed by the popularly elected legislature, a veto, however, that could be overridden by a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature. Hulsebosch sees the creation of this veto in a novel way. He writes that the “Council of Revision … filled gaps created by the loss of imperial government … [and in effect] domesticated the Privy Council process … of legislative review” (176).

He observes that “creole elites like [Robert R.] Livingston Jr. expressed reservations about the large amount of power held by the legislature and reconstituted something like Privy Council review to check that power,” and he concedes that “some antidemocratic sentiment” lay behind that response (176–77). But in the end he attributes the creation of the council to “its familiarity,” incorrectly asserting that gubernatorial vetoes were a common feature of early state constitutions. In fact, except for South Carolina's brief flirtation with a gubernatorial veto, no state at the time gave its governor a veto over legislation until Massachusetts did in 1780. To be certain, a few states allowed the governor to cast a vote on legislation as a member of the upper house. But at the time it was introduced, the veto provision in New York's constitution represented a sharp departure from the norm. Most of the first state constitutions created weak governors, appointed in many cases by the legislature itself, and stripped of the power to veto legislation. This was not coincidental. It represented a decisive rejection by many Revolutionary-era Americans of the architecture of the imperial constitution, which had, after all, been erected in the first place precisely for the purpose of imposing checks on their power to govern themselves through popularly elected assemblies. Hulsebosch may well have understated the extent to which creole elites, in borrowing features of the imperial machinery for use in New York, hoped to achieve a similar result.

In later chapters, Hulsebosch goes on to show just how important the imperial constitution continued to be in the thinking of many elite New Yorkers. This insight represents one of Hulsebosch's most important contributions. When New Yorkers like Alexander Hamilton, who played central roles in creating the federal constitution, began to plan for a stronger national government, Hulsebosch very clearly demonstrates that they were thinking (and talking) in terms of constituting a new American empire that would eventually spread over the continent but that, if it was to be successful, had to recreate and reimpose on state governments some of the same imperial constraints to which they had previously been subject as British colonies. Here again, by emphasizing the positive, empire-building side of their plans, Hulsebosch may have underestimated the importance to these national elites of simply imposing checks on popular government at the state level. Indeed, there are a number of eerie parallels between the constraints the federal constitution imposed on the states and the ways in which the British empire had operated earlier. In 1751 and again in 1764, to take a single example, Parliament passed acts prohibiting American colonies from issuing paper currency, in part to protect British merchants against the adverse effects of currency depreciation. In 1787, the federal convention added a similar provision to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the states from issuing paper money—for similar reasons.

The second major strand in Hulsebosch's narrative describes a transformation from British constitutionalism to American constitutional law. Drawing on the work of John Phillip Reid, Hulsebosch explains that the most important characteristic of eighteenth-century British constitutionalism was not that it was unwritten—many sources of the British constitution were in fact written—but that “no single organ of government enjoyed the role of preeminent interpreter” (40) and, we may add, enforcer. As a consequence, the “British Constitution was a composite of whatever views could be plausibly argued and forcibly maintained” (32). At least three different, conflicting versions of the constitution had emerged by mid-eighteenth century in New York itself, supported and maintained by different groups in society. American constitutional law developed out of British constitutionalism when, after the Revolution, American lawyers began to argue for and American judges began to assert a power to act as “preeminent” interpreters of American constitutions, as judicially enforceable higher law. It is in connection with the creation of constitutional law in America that Hulsebosch brings together his two main narratives. For the creation of constitutional law represented an important strategy for implementing the vision of a domestic empire. “No institution replaced the Privy Council. There was, however, a federal Supreme Court. … Judges deserved this role of policing repugnancy because they excelled at legal interpretation, and the Constitution was [simply] another type of law, albeit the `fundamental law’” (248).

This important book contains many more inspired insights than we have been able to discuss in this short review. One thing, however, seems indisputable. It offers a capacious new interpretation of American constitutionalism that is certain to figure prominently in constitutional history literature for years to come.