Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution

Twenty-eight years after he published Original Meanings, Jack Rakove reflects on how debates over deciphering the original meaning of the Constitution’s many clauses now dominate American constitutional jurisprudence. He proposes that while one might assume such inquiries would be inherently historical in nature──asking what the framers of the Constitution intended particular clauses to mean, or what its ratifiers or early commentators understood these provisions to imply──the application of these inquiries today has in fact taken another course. Instead of emphasizing the kinds of sources historians rely on, modern originalists practice a distinctively textual approach to constitutional interpretation, usually described as “public meaning originalism.” This approach suggests that the text had fixed meanings that either informed citizens or learned jurists could readily comprehend.

Rakove’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Original Meanings, published in 1996, rested on different premises. It assumed that the Constitution, as it was framed and ratified, was the product of debates that were inherently political in nature. If one did not reconstruct the concerns underlying those debates and decisions, one would never know what its original meaning was, especially when one dealt with the most important and potentially controversial or ambiguous clauses.

The Robert C. Baron Lecture, inaugurated in 2004, brings a distinguished AAS member who has written a seminal work of history to Antiquarian Hall to reflect on the book’s impact on scholarship and society in the years since its first appearance.

This hybrid program will be held in person at Antiquarian Hall and livestreamed to a virtual audience on YouTube. Advance registration is required for both. Doors open at 6:30pm.