Customer Reviews

Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This contribution to the seemingly endless debate over original intent serves a purpose in demonstrating that what often passes as a jurisprudence of original intent is anything but that. Jaffa effectively shows that the denial of natural law by modern jurists, both conservative and liberal (although fellow conservatives are the target of most criticism in this book), cannot be squared with the views of the Founders. Jaffa's further argument, that the Constitution must be interpreted in light of the words of the Declaration of Independence, is less successful. A problem is that the author focuses so much on one case (the Dred Scott decision) to prove his point that it is difficult to see how natural law thinking would be applied to other, less emotionally-charged cases. Apparently, Jaffa wants judges to read Aristotle, Cicero, Locke and the like and decide cases based on the insights gleaned from therein. It should be said, however, that the inclusion of the three critical essays from fellow professors, and Jaffa's reply to all three, does allow for an expansion of the author's thinking beyond what is presented in the main, introductory essay (although it does mean that there is a good deal of repetition througout the book). As a critique of self-proclaimed originalists, this is a useful work, but it has little in the way of constructive proposals.

Though Dr. Jaffa makes a habit of the poor practice of shooting his friends in the back, at times it is the duty of friends--upon being confronted by an enemy of moronic proportions--to come to one another's assistance in light of such great an injustice. The reviewer, or rather backroom scribbler, who had the audacity to rate Dr. Jaffa's book as worthy of only one star, must be a woman or else a madman, for only one of those two would be capable of such an unjustified criticism supported by such weak polemics. Though Dr. Jaffa's book does not take full account of the extent to which Lincoln--and the founders--understood the inherent dangers of equality (as they were seen in practice and elucidated by Tocqueville) it is nonetheless a master stroke of penmanship, philosophy, and history that sheds light on the possibility for practical, yet noble, government that is afforded us under the framework of the constitution. Dr. Jaffa's detractor deserves the penalty afforded by Jefferson to Sodomites--although in this case we'd be cutting off the upper-most organ as well as the lower, thus putting the guillotine to a dual use.

This book takes up where its author's personal quest, detailedin its pages, left off. As the author tells it, he made a point offollowing former Attorney General Edwin Meese III around the country to hector him on his understanding of the meaning of the United States Constitution. Whenever Meese simply ignored him, Jaffa says (though not in those words), it was a great rhetorical victory for Jaffa!

One might read Jaffa's account and conclude that Meese was simply responding to Jaffa's behavior the way a polite man would. Jaffa's rhetoric in this book also strikes the reader as being aimed below the belt.

Following on a private letter that James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson well after both of them had retired from public life, Jaffa insists that all of the constitution must be read in the refracted light of the Declaration of Independence. This is a common reading of the Old Left, one that Abraham Lincoln and Mario Cuomo share.

Of course, it has no relationship to reality. Neither in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 nor in the ratifying conventions did people make a point of holding the constitution to the Declaration's standard; indeed, given that the Declaration includes sections upbraiding King George III for trying to provoke slave rebellions in Virginia, one wonders exactly how "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" have come to seem to Jaffa, _et al._ to be the Declaration's message.

Avoid this book, then, unless you desire to see an exotic brand of "conservatism" in its most virulent strain. Other than that, it's both unreliable and unreadable.