The Secret History of American Constitutional Skepticism: a Recovery and Preliminary Evaluation
ARTICLES THE SECRET HISTORY OF AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL SKEPTICISM: A RECOVERY AND PRELIMINARY EVALUATION Louis Michael Seidman* INTRODUCTION Over two centuries after its ratification, most Americans are still infatuated with their Constitution.1 At the beginning, few would have predicted this outcome. The Constitution was born out of bitter con- flict.2 For many Anti-federalists—perhaps a majority of the country3— * Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Cen- ter. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Michael Klarman, who gave me many, many single spaced pages of comments on an earlier draft of this article. I also received very helpful comments from Adam Cox, Michael Diamond, Peter Edelman, Daniel Ernst, Deborah Hellman, Aziz Huq, Vicki Jackson, Jerry Kang, Martin Lederman, Daryl Levinson, Debo- rah Malamud, Allegra McLeod, Thomas Nachbar, Gary Peller, Adam Samaha, Girardeau Spann, Mark Tushnet, Laura Weinrib, and participants at the Georgetown Faculty Work- shop, the Duke Roundtable on the Role of Custom, Convention, and Tradition in U.S. Constitutional Law, and the University of Virginia Legal Theory Workshop. I am grateful to Noah Baron, Hannah Kohler, Melissa Stewart, Morgan Stoddard, Katie Wrede, and the staff of the Georgetown Law Center Library for superb research assistance. 1 See, e.g., GfK Roper Pub. Affairs & Corporate Commc’ns, The AP-National Constitution Center Poll, August, 2012, at 5 (2012), available at http://constitutioncenter.org/media/ files/data_GfK_AP-NCC_Poll_August_GfK_2012_Topline_FINAL_1st_release.pdf (find- ing that almost seven in ten Americans agree that “[t]he United States Constitution is an enduring document that remains relevant today”). 2 See generally PAULINE MAIER, RATIFICATION: THE PEOPLE DEBATE THE CONSTITUTION, 1787-1788 (2010); WOODY HOLTON, UNRULY AMERICANS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE CONSTITUTION (2007); Bruce Ackerman & Neal Katyal, Our Unconventional Founding, 62 U.
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