A Plea for Strict Construction
Does the U.S. Constitution even work anymore? It may not be a pleasant question to ask, but it is hardly distant from the minds of many Americans. The federal government seems bigger and more bloated than ever, with the tentacles of the administrative state touching nearly every aspect of our lives. Centralizing authority has extended its economic and social control by assuming powers the Framers never intended to give it. From a certain point of view, the whole concept of republican self-government can seem like a tragic joke.
In The Independent Guide to the Constitution, legal scholar William J. Watkins, Jr. offers a provocative solution that may restore the Founders’ vision: strict construction. Building on the constitutional thought of Old Republicans such as John Randolph of Roanoke, St. George Tucker, and John Taylor of Caroline, he articulates a serious alternative to the ways of (mis)interpreting the Constitution that dominate legal discourse today. According to Watkins, the strict constructionism these Old Republicans advocate is a more solid ground for originalism than various theories presently en vogue.
In many ways, some form of the strict constructionism Watkins advocates must be at the heart of any kind of constitutional revival. By making the Constitution itself the fulcrum of American politics, we would both lower the stakes of some of our most heated debates and return a concern for liberty to the forefront. Many of Watkins’s recommendations, including a renewed federalism, judicial restraint, and a return to the limits of enumerated powers, are altogether salutary. At the same time, though, his dedication to the particularly Jeffersonian school carries his argument a bit too far—especially as regards executive power and the original Federalists’ historic vision for the Constitution. Nevertheless, he deserves great credit for drawing his readers’ attention back to the fundamental axioms of the American political tradition.
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