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The Second Creation - Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era (Hardcover)
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The Second Creation - Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era (Hardcover)
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A stunning revision of our founding document's evolving history
that forces us to confront anew the question that animated the
founders so long ago: What is our Constitution? Americans widely
believe that the United States Constitution was created when it was
drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1788. But in a shrewd rereading of
the Founding era, Jonathan Gienapp upends this long-held
assumption, recovering the unknown story of American constitutional
creation in the decade after its adoption-a story with explosive
implications for current debates over constitutional originalism
and interpretation. When the Constitution first appeared, it was
shrouded in uncertainty. Not only was its meaning unclear, but so
too was its essential nature. Was the American Constitution a
written text, or something else? Was it a legal text? Was it
finished or unfinished? What rules would guide its interpretation?
Who would adjudicate competing readings? As political leaders put
the Constitution to work, none of these questions had answers.
Through vigorous debates they confronted the document's
uncertainty, and-over time-how these leaders imagined the
Constitution radically changed. They had begun trying to fix, or
resolve, an imperfect document, but they ended up fixing, or
cementing, a very particular notion of the Constitution as a
distinctively textual and historical artifact circumscribed in
space and time. This means that some of the Constitution's most
definitive characteristics, ones which are often treated as innate,
were only added later and were thus contingent and optional.
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