The Constitution Besieged offers a compelling reinterpretation of one of the most notorious periods in American constitutional history. In the decades following the Civil War, federal and state judges struck down as unconstitutional a great deal of innovative social and economic legislation. Scholars have traditionally viewed this as the work of a conservative judiciary more interested in promoting laissez-faire economics than in interpreting the Constitution. Gillman challenges this scholarly orthodoxy by showing how these judges were in fact observing a long-standing constitutional prohibition against "e;class legislation."e; Originally published in cloth by Duke University Press, this book received the 1994 C. Herman Pritchett Award for the "e;Best Book in the Field of Law and Courts,"e; awarded by the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association.