Constitutional Meaning and Semantic Instability

It is ironic that recent efforts to understand the original meaning of the Constitution have shown little interest in understanding the way Americans in the Founding era theorized the nature of language itself, particularly constitutional communication.1 Compounding this irony is the fact that Federalists and Anti-Federalists each were deeply concerned about the way politics could infect constitutional language, distorting it.2 By contrast, most forms of originalist inquiry have been far less sophisticated, choosing instead to approach language as if it were a transparent medium of objective communication.3 Future efforts to understand the original debates over constitutional meaning need to reject such simplistic and anachronistic assumptions. Indeed, historian Jack Rakove has recently argued that any attempt to understand the nature of the original debate over the Constitution must grapple with the underlying conceptions about the nature of language held by members of the Founding era. In particular, Rakove notes that Madison’s own approach to constitutional language and interpretation echoed themes and concerns about semantic instability found in Locke.4 Historian and philosopher Hannah Dawson has focused renewed attention on the connection between Locke’s views of language and his political theory. Dawson argues that Locke believed that “the meanings of words are unstable, that different people mean different things by the same words.” This view had profound consequences for post-Revolutionary politics and law.5

Anachronism · Constitution · Constitutional theory · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy) · Linguistics · Meaning (existential) · Original meaning · Originalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Legal and Constitutional Studies · Philosophy

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