Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:46:44.619Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE GRAIL OF ORIGINAL MEANING: USES OF THE PAST IN AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY*Prothero Lecture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2016

Colin Kidd
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Originalist jurisprudence, which enjoins a faithful adherence to the values enshrined in the late eighteenth-century Constitution, has become a prominent feature of contemporary American conservatism. Recovering the original meaning of the Constitution is far from straightforward, and raises major issues of historical interpretation. How far do the assumed historical underpinnings of originalist interpretation mesh with the findings of academic historians? To what extent has the conservative invocation of the Founding Fathers obscured a lost American Enlightenment? Nor is ‘tradition’ in American Constitutional law an unproblematic matter. How far does a desire to restore the original meaning of the Constitution ignore the role of ‘stare decisis’ (precedent) in America's common law heritage? It transpires, moreover, that the various schemes of historical interpretation in American Constitutional jurisprudence do not map easily onto a simple liberal–conservative divide.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 26 , December 2016 , pp. 175 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I should like to thank John Hudson for remarks on an earlier draft of this piece.

References

1 The Invention of Tradition, ed. E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (Cambridge, 1983).

2 381 US 479 (1965).

3 Cf. Horwitz, M., The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 (Cambridge, MA, 1977)Google Scholar.

4 Cf. Perlstein, R., The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan (New York, 2014), 262–3Google Scholar, for Congresswoman Barbara Jordan's famous speech to the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate: ‘But when [the Constitution] was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that “We, the people.”. . .I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake.’ Yet, even this critical preamble notwithstanding, Jordan's speech went on to celebrate the Constitution.

5 Tushnet, M., ‘Critical Legal Studies and Constitutional Law’, Stanford Law Review, 36 (1984), 623–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Dahl, R. A., How Democratic Is the American Constitution? (New Haven, 2002)Google Scholar; Levinson, Sanford, Our Undemocratic Constitution (Oxford and New York, 2006)Google Scholar.

7 R. Bellah, ‘Civil Religion in America’, originally published in Daedalus (Winter, 1967), reprinted in American Civil Religion, ed. R. E. Richey and D. G. Jones (New York, 1974), 21–44.

8 Brookhiser, R., What Would the Founders Do? Our Questions, their Answers (New York, 2006)Google Scholar.

9 The Federalist, ed. T. Ball (Cambridge, 2003), 169.

10 By contrast, see Lazare, D., The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (New York, 1996)Google Scholar.

11 Berger, R., Executive Privilege: A Constitutional Myth (Cambridge, MA, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Kalman, L., The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism (New Haven, 1996), 109 Google Scholar.

13 Brest, P., ‘The Misconceived Quest for Original Understanding’, Boston University Law Review, 60 (1980), 204–38Google Scholar.

14 Teles, S., The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement (Princeton, 2008), 135–80Google Scholar.

15 Meese, E. III, ‘Interpreting the Constitution’, in Interpreting the Constitution: The Debate over Original Intent, ed. Rakove, J. (Boston, MA, 1990), 13–21 Google Scholar, esp. 17, 20.

16 W. J. Brennan Jr, ‘The Constitution of the United States: Contemporary Ratification’, in Interpreting, ed. Rakove, 23–34, at 23, 25, 28, 31.

17 Bickel, A., The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics (1962; 2nd edn, New Haven, 1986)Google Scholar.

18 Kutler, S., The Wars of Watergate (1990; New York, 1992), 407 Google Scholar.

19 For Bork's post-mortem on the affair and its wider juridical significance, see Bork, R., The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law (New York, 1990)Google Scholar.

20 Ginsburg, D., ‘Delegation Running Riot’, Regulation, 1 (1995), 83–7Google Scholar, at 84.

21 Solum, L. and Bennett, R., Constitutional Originalism: A Debate (Ithaca, NY, 2011), 2.Google Scholar

22 Goldford, D., The American Constitution and the Debate over Originalism (Cambridge, 2005), 9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 For the varieties of textualism, see O'Neill, J., Originalism in American Law and Politics (Baltimore, 2005), 4–5 Google Scholar.

24 Rossum, R. A., Understanding Clarence Thomas: The Jurisprudence of Constitutional Restoration (Lawrence, KS, 2014)Google Scholar, esp. 12–15.

25 553 US 35 (2008).

26 For the evolution of Scalia's jurisprudence of original meaning and its insistent distance from the originalism of Bork and Thomas, see Murphy, B. A., Scalia: A Court of one (New York, 2014)Google Scholar, esp. 111–12, 126, 143, 153, 164, 246–7, 369.

27 Scalia, A., ‘Originalism: The Lesser Evil’, University of Cincinnati Law Review, 57 (1989), 849–65Google Scholar, at 861.

28 The Bork Hearings, ed. R. E. Shaffer (Princeton, 2005), 161.

29 www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/08–1448.pdf (at 17).

30 Dworkin, R., Freedom's Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar; Dworkin, R., ‘Comment’, at 119–26, in Scalia, A., A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law, ed. Gutman, A. (Princeton, 1997)Google Scholar; Dworkin, R., Justice in Robes (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 29–30 Google Scholar, 117–39.

31 Whittington, K. E., ‘Dworkin's “Originalism”: The Role of Intentions in Constitutional interpretation’, Review of Politics, 62 (2000), 197–229 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Balkin, J., Living Originalism (Cambridge, MA, 2012)Google Scholar.

33 Brest, ‘Misconceived’, 221, 231.

34 Rakove, J., Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (1996; New York, 1997), 3 Google Scholar.

35 Ibid., 10.

36 Ibid., 6, 8, 10.

37 Ackerman, B., We the People, i: Foundations (Cambridge, MA, 1991)Google Scholar.

38 Ackerman, B., ‘Our Unconventional Founding’, University of Chicago Law Review, 62 (1995), 475–573 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 476.

39 Ibid., 481.

40 Ibid., 568.

41 Amar, A. R., ‘Of Sovereignty and Federalism’, Yale Law Journal, 96 (1987), 1425–520CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 1446–8; Amar, A. R., ‘Philadelphia Revisited: Amending the Constitution outside Article V’, University of Chicago Law Review, 55 (1988), 1043–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 1048; Amar, A. R., ‘The Consent of the Governed: Constitutional Amendment outside Article V’, Columbia Law Review, 94 (1994), 457–508 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 462–9, 489, 507.

42 See Ackerman, B., We the People, ii: Transformations (Cambridge, MA, 1998)Google Scholar.

43 Ackerman, ‘Unconventional’, 573.

44 Ibid., 571.

45 Ackerman, We the People, i, 51.

46 Ibid., 569.

47 Amar, A. R., The Bill of Rights (New Haven, 1998)Google Scholar.

48 Both contributed to the special issue of the Yale Law Journal on republican theory: Sunstein, C., ‘Beyond the Republican Revival’, Yale Law Journal, 97 (1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 1539; Michelman, F., ‘Law's Republic’, Yale Law Journal, 97 (1988), 1493 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Bailyn, B., The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1967)Google Scholar; Bailyn, B., The Origins of American Politics (New York, 1968)Google Scholar.

50 Wood, G., The Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787 (1969, New York, 1972)Google Scholar.

51 Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975)Google Scholar.

52 See, amidst a vast literature, Shalhope, R., ‘Toward a Republican Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Classical Republicanism in American Historiography’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 29 (1972), 49–80 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shalhope, R., ‘Republicanism and Early American Historiography’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 39 (1982), 334–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Banning, L., The Jeffersonian Persuasion (Ithaca, NY, 1978)Google Scholar; McCoy, D., The Elusive Republic (Chapel Hill, 1980)Google Scholar.

53 Cf. Skinner, Q., ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory, 8 (1969), 3–53 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Rodgers, D., ‘Republicanism: The Career of a Concept’, Journal of American History, 79 (1992), 11–38 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 33.

55 Fallon, R., ‘What Is Republicanism, and Is it Worth Reviving?’, Harvard Law Review, 102 (1988–9), 1695–735CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. at 1699, 1723, 1733–4.

56 Cf. the rehabilitation from condescension in Levinson, S., ‘The Embarrassing Second Amendment’, Yale Law Journal, 99 (1989), 637–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Williams, D., The Mythic Meanings of the Second Amendment (New Haven, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cornell, S., A Well-Regulated Militia (New York, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Cf. Kelly, A. H., ‘Clio and the Court: An Illicit Love Affair’, Supreme Court Review (1965), 119–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Cf. Richards, N. M., ‘Clio and the Court: A Reassessment of the Supreme Court's Uses of History’, Journal of Law and Politics, 13 (1997), 809–77Google Scholar; Flaherty, M. S., ‘History “Lite” in Modern American Constitutionalism’, Columbia Law Review, 95 (1995), 523–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kalman, Strange Career.

60 Wootton, D., ‘Introduction’, in The Essential Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, ed. Wootton, D. (Indianapolis, 2003)Google Scholar.

61 Holmes, D. L., The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (Oxford, 2006)Google Scholar.

62 Cf. Kidd, C., ‘Civil Theology and Church Establishments in Revolutionary America’, Historical Journal, 42 (1999), 1007–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Munoz, V., God and the Founders (Cambridge, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Cf. Levy, L. W., The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment (New York, 1986)Google Scholar.

64 Cf. Curry, T. J., The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the First Amendment (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; Bradley, G. V., Church–State Relationships in America (Westport, CT, 1987)Google Scholar.

65 May, H. F., The Enlightenment in America (New York, 1976)Google Scholar. See also Ferguson, R. A., The American Enlightenment 1750–1820 (Cambridge, MA, 1997)Google Scholar.

66 Cf. Darnton, R., George Washington's False Teeth (New York, 2003)Google Scholar.

67 Cf. New York v. Lochner 198 US 45 (1905).

68 US v. Carolene Products 304 US 144 (1938). Henceforth, the Court would defer to the legislative branch, but would apply stricter standards of scrutiny to legislation which appeared to violate Constitutional prohibitions, to distort the political process or to discriminate against minorities.

69 Barnett, R., Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty (Princeton, 2004)Google Scholar.

70 Napolitano, A., The Constitution in Exile (Nashville, 2006)Google Scholar.

71 Barnett, R., ‘Scalia's Infidelity: A Critique of “Faint-Hearted” Originalism’, University of Cincinnati Law Review, 75 (2006), 7–24 Google Scholar, at 13.

72 Bork Hearings, ed. Shaffer, 106.

73 See e.g. Barnett, Restoring; Barnett, R., ‘The Ninth Amendment: It Means What it Says’, Texas Law Review, 85 (2006), 1–85 Google Scholar.

74 See McDonald v. City of Chicago 561 US 742 (2010).

75 McDowell had previously proposed procedural solutions to tackle the problem of judicial overreach: see McDowell, G., ‘A Modest Remedy for Judicial Activism’, Public Interest, 67 (Spring 1982), 3–20 Google Scholar.

76 For the Straussians, see – variously and subjectively – Drury, S., Leo Strauss and the American Right (New York, 1997)Google Scholar; Norton, A., Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (New Haven, 2004)Google Scholar; Burnyeat, M., ‘Sphinx without a Secret’, New York Review of Books (30 May 1985), 30–6Google Scholar; C. and Zuckert, M., The Truth about Leo Strauss (Chicago, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 Deutsch, K. L., ‘Leo Strauss, the Straussians and the American Regime’, in Leo Strauss, the Straussians and the American Regime, ed. Deutsch, K. L. and Murley, John A. (Lanham, MD, 1999), 51–67 Google Scholar. Cf. Rahe, P., Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1982)Google Scholar.

78 Diamond, M., ‘Ethics and Politics: The American Way’, in The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, ed. Horwitz, R. H., 3rd edn (Charlottesville, 1986)Google Scholar, 75–108, at 81, 92, 95; Diamond, M., ‘Democracy and the Federalist’, American Political Science Review, 53 (1959), 52–68 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 62, 64, 66; Diamond, M., ‘The Separation of Powers and the Mixed Regime’ and ‘The American Idea of Equality’, both in As Far as Republican Principles Will Admit: Essays by Martin Diamond, ed. Schambra, W. (Washington DC, 1992), 63 Google Scholar, 249.

79 G. Will, F., Statecraft as Soulcraft (1984), 23–4Google Scholar, 40–1, 159.

80 M. Dry, ‘Herbert Storing: The American Founding and the American Regime’, in Leo Strauss, ed. Deutsch and Murley, 305–28.

81 Storing, H., What the Antifederalists Were For (Chicago, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The Complete Anti-Federalist, ed. H. Storing (7 vols., Chicago, 1981).

82 Berns, W., Freedom, Virtue and the First Amendment (Baton Rouge, 1957)Google Scholar; Berns, W., ‘Religion and the Founding Principle’, in The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, ed. Horwitz, R. H., 3rd edn (Charlottesville, 1986), 204–29Google Scholar.

83 Jaffa, H. V., ‘In Defense of Political Philosophy’, National Review (22 Jan. 1982), 36–44 Google Scholar, at 41; Jaffa, H. V., Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution (Washington DC, 1994)Google Scholar.

84 Pangle, T., ‘Patriotism American Style’, National Review (29 Nov. 1985), 30–4Google Scholar, at 32.

85 Lerner, R., ‘The Supreme Court as Republican Schoolmaster’, Supreme Court Review (1967), 127–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 128–9, 156, 159–60.

86 Pangle, T., The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago, 1988), 36 Google Scholar.

87 M. Zuckert, ‘Redefining the Founding: Martin Diamond, Leo Strauss and the American Regime’, in Leo Strauss, ed. Deutsch and Murley, 235–51, at 242. Beard, Charles (1874–1948) had argued in An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (New York, 1913)Google Scholar that the Constitution was a ploy to secure the property of financial-mercantile-creditor elites at the expense of indebted agrarian interests.

88 Wood, G., ‘The Fundamentalists and the Constitution’, New York Review of Books (18 Feb. 1988), 33–40 Google Scholar.

89 See amidst another vast literature, Nelson, W. E., The Fourteenth Amendment: From Political Principle to Judicial Doctrine (Cambridge, MA, 1998)Google Scholar.

90 Cf. Levy, L.W., ‘History and Original Intent’, in Levy, L. W., Original Intent and the Framers’ Constitution (Chicago, 1988), 313 Google Scholar.