Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2015
Abstract
For as long as we have had a Constitution, we have been debating how to interpret it. With the conclusion of the Supreme Court's recent 2013 term and its handful of closely divided, hotly contested cases, we can rest safe in the assumption that, despite the notable uptick in unanimous decisions issued by the Court, the figurative "end of history" in constitutional interpretation, in which the major partisans in our annual Constitutional skirmishes lay down their arms and settle upon one particular interpretive lens through which to read the Constitution, is nowhere in sight. If Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, two of the Constitution's principal architects and leading spokesmen who co-authored The Federalist, could not later agree on the meaning of the words on the page to which they had signed their names, should we expect to do any better? But despite their deep disagreements over how to read the Constitution, Americans from across the spectrum still seem to revere the old musty document. In an era of increasing polarization and growing skepticism about many things official-Congress, the president, the Republican and Democratic parties, business corporations, even the Supreme Court, etc.- the Constitution remains, as it has throughout much of American history, a document that continues to pull powerfully on the heartstrings of citizens. Americans may hate politics, as the pundit E. J. Dionne has observed, and distrust their government, but they continue to love the governing document that structures our politics and organizes our government.
Recommended Citation
Derek Webb, Between Two Palm Trees: Reading the Constitution in Paradise, 64 J. Legal Educ. 699 (2015).