The Language of Law and the Foundations of American Constitutionalism

America’s Founders believed that creation of the Constitution signaled acceptance of the belief that men could create their governments from what Alexander Hamilton called “reflection and choice” and not be doomed to whatever fate may bring as a result of “accident and force.” At the heart of this idea is the further confidence that language, as John Locke said, “is the great instrument and common tye of society.” The Founders held that their written and ratified Constitution of limited enumerated powers was understood to be the embodiment of what Hamilton called the ‘intention of the people.” The recovery of that original foundation of the Constitution begins with the premises of those who stood at the beginning of modernity, especially Locke and Thomas Hobbes, for it is in their political philosophies of natural rights that one sees most clearly the moral grounds of originalism as the standard of interpretation. Originalism is rooted in the belief that men are all created equal and may not be legitimately ruled arbitrarily by another and that, to avoid such tyranny, all legitimate government must rest upon the consent of the sovereign people from whom all power flows.

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