Resource person: Audra Bullard

Description:

If it sometimes seems that the liberal and conservative justices on the Supreme Court are reading two different constitutions, it might be because they are. Not literally, of course—the United States has just one Constitution—but that Constitution has, and has always had, two very different meanings. Even before the text of the Constitution was ratified, the nation was divided over what that text actually meant. Did “We the People” mean the People of the nation, or of each state? When the Constitution declares that the “executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America” does it mean that all executive power is vested in the President? That only executive power is vested in the President? Debates over such questions—and many more—have raged throughout American history, and continue to define our constitutional politics even today. Rather than trying to determine which interpretation reflects the “original meaning” of the Constitution, Lasser argues, we should recognize that ambiguity is the defining feature of the constitutional text, and that grappling with that ambiguity is both a challenge and an opportunity not only for constitutional scholars, but for the nation itself.

 

William Lasser is the Director of the Clemson Honors College and Alumni Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Clemson University. A graduate of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is the author of numerous books and articles on law and American politics, including “The Supreme Court and Critical Realignment,” “ The Limits of Judicial Power: the Supreme Court and American Politics,” “Benjamin Cohen: Architect of the New Deal,” “The Supreme Court and the Political Process,” and “Was There a Switch in Time: Justice Roberts and the Constitutional Revolution of 1937."

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