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Read the Constitution all you want -- it still needs interpreting
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| Contributor | Brandonius Maximus |
| Last Edited | Brandonius Maximus Jan 27, 2011 11:29am |
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| Category | Opinion |
| Author | JACK N. RAKOVE |
| News Date | Thursday, January 27, 2011 05:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description |
The new Republican House’s insistence that all legislation be securely tethered to a constitutional source has generated much talk. Yet there have been periods — indeed, whole eras — in American history when Congress regularly debated about the Constitution.
Dip into the congressional debates of the 1820s, for example, and one finds repeated, lengthy discussions about whether Congress had the constitutional authority to fund “internal improvements” — that is, infrastructure like roads and canals.
From the adoption of the Constitution through the Civil War and Reconstruction, there were similar prolonged disputes on a whole array of constitutional powers. Members of both chambers offered lengthy orations, expounding their constitutional views in celebrated exchanges — like the famous 1830 Senate debate between Daniel Webster and Robert Hayne over the nature of the federal union. |
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