The Hollow Core of Constitutional Theory

Why We Need the Framers

Donald L. Drakeman

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781108485289
• eBook ISBN: 9781108620949
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Jurisprudence
• Index: Law

The Hollow Core of Constitutional Theory is the first major defense of the central role of the Framers' intentions in constitutional interpretation to appear in years. This book starts with a reminder that, for virtually all of Western legal history, when judges interpreted legal texts, their goal was to identify the lawmaker's will. However, for the past fifty years, constitutional theory has increasingly shifted its focus away from the Framers. Contemporary constitutional theorists, who often disagree with each other about virtually everything else, have come to share the view that the Framers' understandings are unknowable and irrelevant. This book shows why constitutional interpretation needs to return to its historical core inquiry, which is a search for the Framers' intentions. Doing so is practically feasible, theoretically defensible, and equally important not only for discovering the original meaning, but also for deciding how to apply the Constitution today.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 The Framers and Contemporary Constitutional Theory
• 2 The Framers’ Intentions: Who, What, and Where
• 3 Original Methods and the Limits of Interpretation
• 4 Original Methods Updating
• 5 The Semantic Summing Problem
• 6 Is Corpus Linguistics Better than Flipping a Coin?
• 7 The Framers’ Intentions Can Solve the Semantic Summing Problem
• 8 Interpretation and Sociological Legitimacy
• 9 Noninterpretive Decisions
• 10 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index