Kontraktualne korzenie amerykańskiego konstytucjonalizmu. Między rozumem, doświadczeniem a wiarą
Contractual origins of American constitutionalism. Between reason, experience and faith

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the vital resources of American constitutionalism. The very frame of American republicanism, as a political idea, and its institutions, as this idea’s embodiment, were founded on (1) the Anglo -Saxon constitutional tradition, (2) the philosophy of social contract, and (3) the puritan notion of covenant as a sacred contract between God and His chosen nation. The common dominator of these three is contractualism. The major goal of the article is to verify the correctness of John Jay’s emphatic comment that “the Americans are the first people whom heaven has favored with an opportunity of deliberating upon, and choosing the forms of government under which they should live (…) under the guidance of reason and experience”, by invoking, on the one hand, selected texts of colonial charters or political pamphlets of the New England founders, and on the other, the Founding Fathers’ positions on the well -ordered state and nation.

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