The Second Creation
Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4156670 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Thomas Konig (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 106 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 449-449 |
| Publication date | 2019-09-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jaz386 |
| OpenAlex | W2969857342 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
The presidential oath of office that George Washington took in 1789 prescribed that he “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” It was a command more easily stated than followed because, as Jonathan Gienapp explains in this erudite and provocative volume, it was far from clear what, exactly, Washington and others sworn to office were bound to support. “People were unclear about not only what the Constitution meant but, far more fundamentally, what the Constitution itself actually was” (p. 1, emphasis in original). As an instrument of government, the Constitution was “not fully created when it was written or ratified” (p. 3). Rather, it was “breathtakingly novel” and remained “a profound unknown—when not only its meaning but also its core characteristics were deeply uncertain” (p. 4). That is, those we call the “framers” did not fully know what they had framed. Like Washington, others taking their oaths for federal and state office had to know what the constitution was before they could take a position on how to interpret it. The nature of the constitution would determine its relationship to its language, but Gienapp demonstrates that historical arguments over interpreting its language must be seen in an entirely new context—that of “the indeterminacy of constitutional ontology (uncertainty about the Constitution's basic properties)” that dominated its first decades (p. 341, emphasis in original). Not until its nature was “fixed” would the Constitution be able to give legitimacy to some claims and deny others. Only then could the practices of interpretation proper to such an instrument be debated. Were these rules guiding interpretation to be those used for charters? For compacts? For treaties of confederation? For state constitutions? Were they to follow those used in statutory interpretation? Was constitutional wording to be understood flexibly or narrowly? Should amendments be incorporated into the text where applicable, or appended in a supplement, and did that make any difference
Constitution · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Indeterminacy (philosophy · Interpretation (philosophy · Legitimacy · Limited government · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Originalism · Political science · Politics · Presidential system · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Legal and Constitutional Studies · Legal Systems and Judicial Processes · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.83 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2023 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |