Original Meanings or A Continent for the Taking

Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution

Author: Jack N Rakov

What did the U.S. Constitution originally mean, and who has understood its meaning best? Do we look to the intentions of its framers at the Federal Convention of 1787, or to those of its ratifiers in the states? Or should we trust our own judgment in deciding whether the original meaning of the Constitution should still guide its later interpretation? These are the recurring questions in the ongoing process of analyzing and resolving constitutional issues, but they are also questions about the distant events of the eighteenth century. In this book, Jack Rakove approaches the debates surrounding the framing and ratification of the Constitution from the vantage point of history, examining the range of concerns that shaped the politics of constitution-making in the late 1780s, and which illuminate the debate about the role that "originalism" should play in constitutional interpretation. In answering these questions, Rakove reexamines the classic issues that the framers of the Constitution had to solve: federalism, representation, executive power, rights, and the idea that a constitution somehow embodied supreme law. In each of these cases, Original Meanings suggests that Americans of the early Republic held a spectrum of positions, some drawn from the controversial legacy of Anglo-American politics, others reflecting the course of events since 1776, the politics of the Federal Convention, or the spirited public debate that followed.

Publishers Weekly

Legal conservatives periodically call for judicial decisions based on an interpretation of the Constitution that accords with the "original intent" of those who wrote and ratified it. That's a vexed matter, as Stanford University historian Rakove (The Beginnings of National Politics) shows in this nuanced reconstruction of constitutional debates. First, he explores the difficulty of even divining the understanding of the framers. He goes on to explore James Madison's vital theorizing about federalism, the compromises involved in granting states equal Senate seats and counting slaves in the population, the concept of the Presidency and the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Rakove suggests that the country's political future-whether oriented toward the statehouses or the national capital-depends less on the framers and their constitutional language than on the actions of the American people in the framework that has been created. Moreover, he warns that even Madison's contemporary appeal to originalism was hardly a posture of neutrality. This detailed book will appeal most to students and scholars. (Apr.)

Library Journal

Surveys of Americans consistently reveal the troubling irony that we know very little about the document we profess to revere so highly: the U.S. Constitution. If more books like this nuanced, lucid work were written and read, perhaps this long-standing trend would begin to reverse itself. Rakove, editor of Interpreting the Constitiution: The Debate over Original Intent (Northeastern Univ., 1990), has made a significant and lasting contribution to the scholarship surrounding the adoption of the Constitution. While this persuasive treatment of the ideological and political background of the Constitution will appeal primarily to scholars in the field, the public would be well served by reading this book, particularly since so many appeals and debates are conducted on the meaning of the Constitution. Rakove convincingly shows that while the Constitution's meaning is not always self-evident and that simple and simple-minded appeals to "original intent" should be rejected, neither is the meaning of our foundational political and legal instrument beyond our understanding. Of especial note is Rakove's scrutiny of James Madison. This work ranks with well-known works by Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, Bruce Ackerman, and others. Its focus on the importance of language is reason enough for placing it on one's shelf. Highly recommended for all libraries.-Stephen Kent Shaw, Northwest Nazarene Coll., Nampa, Id.

Kirkus Reviews

Rakove (History/Stanford Univ.; The Beginnings of National Politics, 1979, etc.) demonstrates the historical and theoretical complexity of the seemingly simple notion of a "jurisprudence of original intention"—the theory that judges can interpret the Constitution solely by reference to the opinions of its framers.

Since the 1980s, conservative legal scholars (e.g., Robert Bork) have espoused "originalism" in constitutional interpretation. Adding historical perspective to the legal debate, Rakove here dispels the idea that the Founding Fathers were a monolith; by examining the personal roles of the founders, particularly James Madison, who exercised perhaps the most significant influence over the framing of the Constitution, Rakove shows that the framers were a diverse lot, variegated in their view of the polity they had created. Cmpromise was integral to the politics of constitution-making, Rakove shows, and the need to forge a workable document took precedence over theoretical consistency. The survival of slavery was the most notorious, but not the only, matter on which the framers compromised; the very nuances of federalism itself were unaddressed, leaving a theoretical debate that contributed to the Civil War. Rakove seems to suggest that some of the framers (Jefferson, with his contempt for tradition, stands out), forthright as they were in recreating their political union after the failed Articles of Confederation, would be puzzled at our tendency to worship their creation. Rakove appears to contend that the Constitution was intended to be a living document, not a static, once-and-for-all enumeration of all individual rights and federal powers. "How," asks the author rhetorically, "could those who wrote the Constitution possibly understand its meaning better than those who had the experience of observing and participating in its operation?"

A unique contribution to the historical and legal debate surrounding the Constitution.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgments
	Preface
Ch. I	The Perils of Originalism	3
Ch. II	The Road to Philadelphia	23
Ch. III	The Madisonian Moment	35
Ch. IV	The Politics of Constitution-Making	57
Ch. V	The Concept of Ratification	94
Ch. VI	Debating the Constitution	131
Ch. VII	Federalism	161
Ch. VIII	The Mirror of Representation	203
Ch. IX	Creating the Presidency	244
Ch. X	Rights	288
Ch. XI	Madison and the Origins of Originalism	339
	Coda	366
	A Note on Sources	369
	Notes	371
	Index	421

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A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa

Author: Howard W French

In A Continent for the Taking Howard W. French, a veteran correspondent for The New York Times, gives a compelling firsthand account of some of Africa’s most devastating recent history–from the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko, to Charles Taylor’s arrival in Monrovia, to the genocide in Rwanda and the Congo that left millions dead. Blending eyewitness reportage with rich historical insight, French searches deeply into the causes of today’s events, illuminating the debilitating legacy of colonization and the abiding hypocrisy and inhumanity of both Western and African political leaders.

While he captures the tragedies that have repeatedly befallen Africa’s peoples, French also opens our eyes to the immense possibility that lies in Africa’s complexity, diversity, and myriad cultural strengths. The culmination of twenty-five years of passionate exploration and understanding, this is a powerful and ultimately hopeful book about a fascinating and misunderstood continent.

The Washington Post - Mort Rosenblum

Few words evoke mystique and misconception like the proper noun Africa, and chroniclers have tried to capture its essence ever since Henry Morton Stanley wrote his swashbuckling diary more than a century ago. Howard W. French, a New York Times correspondent on the continent during four of its particularly dark years, adds substantially to this effort.

The New York Times

There are several powerful set pieces, among them grim scenes in Kikwit, the Zairian heartland of the Ebola virus, in 1995, a narrow escape in Liberia and another in Zaire in the course of duty. There are also some well-judged and bitter remarks about Mobutu's state apparatus, including his dangerous and venal secret police, known as the SNIP; a few hours' detention in a SNIP guardhouse, as this reviewer can testify, are enough to unsettle all but the most intrepid or well-financed journalists. — Jeremy Harding

Publishers Weekly

Although both tragedy and hope are mentioned in the subtitle, this work of reportage on Africa focuses more on the former than the latter. French was first captivated by Africa after college, in 1980, when he joined his parents and siblings in Ivory Coast. Taken by the pride and beauty he found on the continent, he became a journalist there, eventually serving as a bureau chief for the New York Times. His strength as a reporter is evident as he takes the reader across the continent, recounting in vivid detail the genocide in Rwanda and the AIDS and Ebola outbreaks. His prose is evocative without being melodramatic in describing the suffering he saw. The "powerful and eerily rhythmic" wailing of those who had lost loved ones to the Ebola virus "was painful to hear, and clearly bespoke of the recent or imminent deaths of loved ones." French is just as eloquent discussing his ambivalence about covering African crises after criticizing other journalists for their pack mentality in focusing on such crises rather than on giving a more rounded picture of life on the continent. In addition to disease and murder, French focuses his book on Africa's other plague: corrupt tyrants. While his insights into Zaire's Mobutu and Congo's Laurent Kabila are valuable, like many other writers on Africa French excoriates the "treachery and betrayal of Africa by a wealthy and powerful West." But providing some ways to improve life there-to give Africans some hope-is not so easy. As his book shows, French might be exactly the kind of seasoned Africa observer who could help point the way. 8 pages of photos, 1 map. Agent, Gloria Loomis. (Apr. 23) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

In this personal memoir of great humanity, French, a New York Times correspondent in West Africa for much of the 1990s, skillfully recounts that decade's most tragic events, from the emergence of the aids crisis to the Rwandan genocide, the start of the Liberian civil war, and the decline and fall of Mobutu Sese Seko's regime in Zaire. Those who remember his remarkable reporting will not be surprised by his telling vignettes of everyday life or by his ability to convey the tragic impact of war on individuals. His portraits of leading personalities in that era's dramas — Charles Taylor, Mobutu, Madeleine Albright — are similarly vivid, and he scathingly criticizes the Clinton administration for reacting to West Africa's murderous civil wars with a mixture of cynicism and carelessness. Disappointingly, French ends his account in 1998, when he left the region. And although his discussion of broader issues, such as the root causes and geostrategic implications of these crises, is not particularly original, this deeply empathetic account of a region in crisis deserves to be read widely.

Kirkus Reviews

History blended with firsthand reportage of postcolonial Africa, "the stage of mankind's greatest tragedies."Center stage, writes New York Times correspondent French, but also sideshow, at least so far as the West is concerned. "We awaken to the place only in fits of coarse self-interest and outright greed," he argues, as when new offshore oil reserves or mineral lodes are discovered. Otherwise, Western governments hold Africa at arm's length: "Serving up atrocities is a business of diminishing returns, and Washington, having experimented with so-called African solutions to African problems, silently recognized its failure and vowed to stay away altogether." In a land sowed with the dragon's teeth of colonial sergeants turned generalissimos, the results of this distancing could only be bloody, and French, who is often moved to anger, spares no chance to lay at least some responsibility for the continent's troubles at foreign doors-and, particularly, those of the Clinton White House, where clucking sympathies and admonitions took the place of any direct action to, say, rein in a client state or tinhorn dictator (Mobutu, Savimbi, Taylor) gone haywire. "It is foolish," French acknowledges, "to think that Washington should carry the burden of blame for most of Africa's problems. . . . [But] it would be dishonest to pretend there is no link between what has perhaps been the least accountable and least democratically run compartment of America's foreign policy-African affairs-and the undemocratic fortunes of the continent." Thus, French suggests, the genocide that swept Rwanda and Burundi in the 1990s might have been curbed, Liberia might have been spared its recent horrors, and more than threemillion Zairians might still be alive had the US, and the other Western powers, acted in a timely way or even paid attention. Of a piece with Daniel Bergner's In the Land of Magic Soldiers (2003): a sobering and much-needed portrait of a land that merits, and requires, our attention. Agent: Gloria Loomis/Watkins Loomis