{"id":1312103,"date":"2019-07-04T22:28:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T04:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/will-column-to-construe-the-constitution-look-to-the-declaration\/"},"modified":"2019-07-04T22:28:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T04:28:00","slug":"will-column-to-construe-the-constitution-look-to-the-declaration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/will-column-to-construe-the-constitution-look-to-the-declaration\/","title":{"rendered":"Will column: To construe the Constitution, look to the Declaration"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WASHINGTON \u00ad\u2014 On this 243rd anniversary of the beginning of the best thing that ever happened \u2014 \u201cThe Great Republic\u201d was Winston Churchill\u2019s tribute \u2014 many of today\u2019s most interesting arguments about America\u2019s nature and meaning are among conservatives. One concerns the relevance of the Declaration of Independence to the contested question of how to construe the Constitution.<\/p>\n

The crucial question is: What did the Founders intend \u2014 what was their foundational purpose? Mark Pulliam, who might disagree that this is the crucial question, certainly thinks the Declaration is not pertinent to construing the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Pulliam, a lawyer and contributing editor of the excellent Law & Liberty blog, notes portentously that the Declaration is not mentioned in the Constitution. This, however, is as obvious as it is obviously irrelevant. Neither is democracy \u201cmentioned,\u201d and the Declaration is hardly mentioned in The Federalist Papers. However, the Declaration expressed, as Jefferson insisted, the broadly shared \u201ccommon sense of the subject.\u201d Rather than belabor the Declaration\u2019s (to them, unremarkable) assertions, the Constitution\u2019s Framers set about creating institutional architecture that would achieve their intention: to establish governance that accords with the common sense of their time, which was that government is properly instituted to \u201csecure\u201d the preexisting natural rights referenced in the Declaration.<\/p>\n

Also obvious and irrelevant is Pulliam\u2019s observation that Jefferson, the Declaration\u2019s primary author, was not at the Constitutional Convention (he was a U.S. diplomat in Paris). What is obvious \u2014 and, concerning the Constitution\u2019s original meaning and continuing purpose, dispositive \u2014 is this: The Declaration\u2019s role is the locus classicus concerning the Framers\u2019 intention, which is surely the master key to properly construing what they wrought.<\/p>\n

The late Judith Shklar (1928-1992), a Harvard political philosopher, correctly noted the \u201cmomentous novelty\u201d of the Constitution\u2019s first three words, \u201cWe the people.\u201d They announced a \u201cdeclaration of independence from the entire European past,\u201d a root-and-branch rejection of all prior attempts to ground the legitimacy of government in anything other than the consent of the governed. The Constitution was, however, written by men of the Enlightenment who were not confident that the rationality they practiced and espoused could be counted on to constantly characterize the republic for which they wrote.<\/p>\n

The Declaration did not mention majority rule, which the Founders embraced because the considered it, when public opinion is properly refined and filtered, the best \u2014 although hardly a certain \u2014 mechanism for protecting the natural rights affirmed in the Declaration. Those rights, not a procedure (majority rule), was their foundational concern. The equilibrium of Madison\u2019s constitutional architecture is currently in disarray, with congressional anemia enabling presidential imperiousness. Nevertheless, the architecture was designed to \u201csecure\u201d \u2014 the crucial verb in the Declaration\u2019s second paragraph \u2014 the natural rights the Declaration affirms.<\/p>\n

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s genius \u2014 he was, in a sense, the final Founder \u2014 was in understanding what the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Rogers M. Smith terms the \u201cDeclaration of Independence-centered view of American governance and peoplehood.\u201d Over the years, this stance of \u201cDeclarationists\u201d explicitly opposed Jacksonian democracy\u2019s majoritarian celebration of a plebiscitary presidency, and the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act\u2019s premise that majorities (\u201cpopular sovereignty\u201d) could and should \u2014 wrong on both counts \u2014 settle the question of whether slavery should expand into the territories.<\/p>\n

The learned and recondite disputes currently embroiling many conservatives, disputes about various doctrines of interpretive constitutional \u201coriginalism,\u201d are often illuminating and sometimes conclusive in constitutional controversies. But all such reasoning occurs in an unchanging context. Timothy Sandefur, author of \u201cThe Conscience of the Constitution,\u201d rightly sees the Declaration as the conscience because it affirms \u201cthe classical liberal project of the Enlightenment and the pervasiveness of such concepts as natural rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furthermore, Sandefur says, this explains the Constitution\u2019s use of the word \u201cliberty,\u201d which \u201cdoes not refer to some definitive list of rights, but refers to an indefinite range of freely chosen action.\u201d Which means that the Constitution should be construed in the bright light cast by the Declaration\u2019s statement of the Founding generation\u2019s general intention to privilege liberty.<\/p>\n

Pulliam dismisses as \u201cinapt Biblical imagery\u201d Lincoln\u2019s elegant formulation that the Constitution is the frame of silver for the apple of gold, which is the Declaration. Lincoln\u2019s mission was to reconnect the nation with its Founding. The frame, Lincoln said, is to \u201cadorn\u201d and \u201cpreserve\u201d the apple. Frames are important and silver is precious, but what is framed is more important and gold is more precious. So, tonight, by the light of some sparklers, read the Declaration, which illuminates what came next, the Constitution, and a nation worth celebrating.<\/p>\n

George Will\u2019s email address is georgewill@washpost.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u00ad\u2014 On this 243rd anniversary of the beginning of the best thing that ever happened \u2014 \u201cThe Great Republic\u201d was Winston Churchill\u2019s tribute \u2014 many of today\u2019s most interesting arguments about America\u2019s nature and meaning are among conservatives. One concerns the relevance of the Declaration of Independence to the contested question of how to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1312103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 02:59:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1312103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1312103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1312103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1312103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}