Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Law and Inequality
Publication Date
1988
Page Number
43
Keywords
Framers of the Constitution
Disciplines
Law
Abstract
There is a tendency in the bicentennial year-and especially this week-to idealize the events of 1787. We tend to presume that the men who wrote the Constitution were near-perfect demigods, who crafted a brilliant and internally consistent document from their own insights. We assume that the Constitution represents the consensus of opinion of those fifty-five men, and even of the population at large in 1787. I want to debunk those myths. I want to talk instead about the problems, about the mistakes, and about the very different visions of government that were represented at the Constitutional Convention. In short, I want to suggest that the drafters of the Constitution stumbled and bungled their way in to the document whose origins we are celebrating here today. That debunking process leaves a problem, however. Once we've debunked the myth and exposed lack of any solid foundation for the Constitution, we are left with a puzzling question. Why has it worked for two hundred years? If the framers were as inept and as wrongheaded as I am going to suggest that they were, how did they create such an effective and long lasting document? That is the main question that I want to answer today, and it is one of the most important questions about the Constitution, because it is what links us to our history.
Recommended Citation
Suzanna Sherry,
Two Hundred Years Ago Today, 6 Law and Inequality. 43
(1988)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications/376