Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8kt4b Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-01T20:27:36.675Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bonding Word and Polity: The Logic of American Constitutionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

William F. Harris II
William F. Harris II*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Fundamental to the logic of American constitutionalism is the bonding of language and politics, the equivocal linkage of two quite different orders of composition. Unabashedly, the constitutional enterprise purports to infuse writing with power and to shape power with the written word. Such a theory of what it means to organize a political order according to a written design should systematically regulate the ongoing processes of constitutional interpretation. The result is a two-text framework of interpretive methods which is justified by the nature of the American constitutional enterprise, a system of signification that coordinates constitutive language, the authoritative modeling of the polity in words, and political legibility, the readability of the resulting scheme of government in operation. The Interpretable Constitution, as such a construct, reflects in its divisions the interconnection between document and polity and demonstrates the bond and tension between the Constitution as a linguistic artifact and the constitution as a political product.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 76 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 34 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berger, Raoul (1977). Government by Judiciary. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Black, Charles L. Jr. (1969). Structure and Relationship in Constitutional Law. Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan (1977). “In Pursuit of Signs.” Daedalus 107: 95–111.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald (1977). Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ely, John Hart (1980). Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fleming, James E. (1980). “A Critique of John Hart Ely's Quest for the Ultimate Constitutional Interpretivism of Representative Democracy.” Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Northeast Political Science Association, New Haven, Conn. Google Scholar
Gabel, Peter (1977). Review of Dworkin, 1977. Harvard Law Review 91: 302–315.10.2307/1340516CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grey, Thomas C. (1975). “Do We Have an Unwritten Constitution?” Stanford Law Review 27: 703–718.10.2307/1228335CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, H. L. A. (1961). The Concept of Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkes, Terrence (1977). Structuralism and Semiotics. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.10.4324/9780203443934CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hemingway, Ernest (1944). “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” The Viking Portable Hemingway. New York: Viking Press, p. 531.Google Scholar
Levinson, Sanford (1979). “‘The Constitution’ in American Civil Religion.” The Supreme Court Review, pp. 123–51.10.1086/scr.1979.3109568CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lieber, Francis (1880). Legal and Political Hermeneutics. St. Louis: F. H. Thomas.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Robert G. (1960). The American Supreme Court. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McIlwain, Charles H. (1947). Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mason, Alpheus T. (1979). The Supreme Court: From Taft to Burger. Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Murphy, Walter F. (1978a) “Constitutional Interpretation: The Art of the Historian, Magician, or Statesman?” Yale Law Journal 87: 1752–71.10.2307/795753CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Walter F. (1978b) “The Art of Constitutional Interpretation: A Preliminary Showing.” In Harmon, M. Judd (ed.), Essays on the Constitution of the United States. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press.Google Scholar
Murphy, Walter F. (1980). “An Ordering of Constitutional Values.” Southern California Law Review 53: 703–60.Google Scholar
Murphy, Walter F., Fleming, James E., and Harris, William F. II (in press). American Constitutional Interpretation. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Price, Reynolds (1978). A Palpable God. New York: Atheneum.Google Scholar
Rawls, John (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.10.4159/9780674042605CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rehnquist, William (1976). “The Notion of a Living Constitution.” Texas Law Review 54: 693–706.Google Scholar
Sartori, Giovanni (1962). Democratic Theory. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Skinner, Quentin (1978). The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Story, Joseph (1833). Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. Boston: Hilliard, Gray.Google Scholar
Tribe, Laurence H. (1978). American Constitutional Law. Mineola, N.Y.: Foundation Press.Google Scholar
Tribe, Laurence H. (1980). “The Puzzling Persistence of Processbased Constitutional Theories.” Yale Law Journal 89: 1063–80.10.2307/796023CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walzer, Michael (1981). “Philosophy and Democracy.” Political Theory 9: 379–99.10.1177/009059178100900307CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.