Textuality and Legitimacy in the Printed Constitution.

Examines the meaning of written and printed constitutions in republican American culture. Americans used them to "literalize" the idea of popular sovereignty. The essential problem was to determine the relationship between the sovereignty of the people and the legal order of society, or the rule of law. "By constituting the government, the people's text literally constitutes the people." The text became the law 'and' the embodiment of popular sovereignty.