The Beginnings of National Politics

Originally published in 1982. Despite a necessary preoccupation with the Revolutionary struggle, America's Continental Congress succeeded in establishing itself as a governing body with national—and international—authority. How the Congress acquired and maintained this power and how the delegates sought to resolve the complex theoretical problems that arose in forming a federal government are the issues confronted in Jack N. Rakove's searching reappraisal of Revolution-era politics. Avoiding the tendency to interpret the decisions of the Congress in terms of competing factions or conflicting ideologies, Rakove opts for a more pragmatic view. He reconstructs the political climate of the Revolutionary period, mapping out both the immediate problems confronting the Congress and the available alternatives as perceived by the delegates. He recreates a landscape littered with unfamiliar issues, intractable problems, unattractive choices, and partial solutions, all of which influenced congressional decisions on matters as prosaic as military logistics or as abstract as the definition of federalism

Joe the Ploughman Reads the Constitution, or, The Poverty of Public Meaning Originalism

Originalism is hot. A couple of decades ago, one might have thought that its death knell had sounded when the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork failed in the Senate. Although one wondered exactly what kind of originalism Justice Bork might have performed in practice, he was regarded as the theory\u27s leading academic spokesman, and the defeat of his nomination might have served as a fatal blow to the cause. Within a few years, however, Justice Antonin Scalia published his lecture Originalism: The Lesser Evil, signaling that the cause remained alive and well. Although Justice Scalia\u27s views of the practice of originalism have also evolved--and in ways that embarrass originalism--leading academic theorists--his endorsement offered a more sophisticated defense of the theory than had appeared, for example, in Attorney General Edwin Meese\u27s public remarks on the subject. Today all observers of the Supreme Court know that Justices Scalia and Thomas are avowed originalists. Equally important, discussions of originalism flourish in law reviews, and the law school of this university has become a high temple of originalist pronouncements and conferences. To the casual observer musing without a data count to rely upon, originalism appears to number among the liveliest--if not the liveliest--topics of current writings in constitutional theory, and the effort to exploit it is no longer confined to a monopolistic pool of conservative academics