South Carolina Law Review Volume 64 Issue 1 Article 6 Fall 2012 The Original Meaning of Civility: Democratic Deliberation at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention Derek A. Webb Stanford Law School Constitutional Law Center Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/sclr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Derek A. Webb, The Original Meaning of Civility: Democratic Deliberation at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, 64 S. C. L. Rev. 183 (2012). This Article is brought to you by the Law Reviews and Journals at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in South Carolina Law Review by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Webb: The Original Meaning of Civility: Democratic Deliberation at the THE ORIGINAL MEANING OF CIVILITY: DEMOCRATIC DELIBERATION AT THE PHILADELPHIA CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION Derek A. Webb* For the past twenty years, legal scholars have pored over the records of the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention for insights into how to best interpret the Constitution's various provisions. In this Essay, I pore over these same materials for insights into how the delegates to the Convention themselves maintained a level of civility throughfour months of grueling deliberations. At a time when our legislative assemblies, still today populated mostly by lawyers, are too often prone to incivility, ad hominem argumentation,polarization, and resistance to compromise, the ups and downs of the PhiladelphiaConstitutional Convention may yet prove a fruitful model for constructive dialogue. In particular,I argue that the Convention was marked by a surprising degree of civic friendship borne out of frequent interaction, daily dinner parties that cut across party and sectional lines, and a variety of parliamentaryprocedures designed to encourage open-mindedness and rational deliberation.